And we learn some other things as well. From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations, an interview with Craig James Hogan, affiliated with Fermilab:
Suzan Mazur: Thank you. There is criticism that the holographic investigation has been going on for almost 20 years, kicked off by Juan Maldacena and that there’s very little evidence so far, despite the bold headlines. That at some point in scientific investigations if the data doesn’t correlate with the experiment as modeled, it’s time to move on.
I gather you don’t share that perspective. You’ve said you’re only at the beginning of the investigation. Do you see this as an emerging field like origin of life, spawning an increasing number of virtual research hubs in various parts of the world?
Craig Hogan: That’s very interesting. It’s true this holographic idea has been around even before Maldacena. The basic idea goes back to the 1970s and black hole entropy and Stephen Hawking. But it’s not fair to say that it’s time to give up because there are very few experiments, and our experiment is the only one of its kind. It’s not like there’s a worldwide program of experiments testing this stuff. I think you have to try to look for it before you give up. We haven’t really been looking that long. We have a small team working on this for less than 10 years. I think you should give us a little bit of time to look for it.
If it isn’t there, we’ll know that within a year or two. And we’ll move on. Then maybe somebody else will try again. More.
Sounds to some of us like: The dream never dies. Okay, dream big then…
Note: One learns a great deal from Mazur’s Oscillations blog about the cosmology names we only read about. Here’s one: Leonard Susskind
…a co-inventor of the holographic principle, threatened to slit his own throat if Hogan found holographic noise. Susskind once threatened me saying that if I ever published the transcript of our 20-minute taped telephone conversation he agreed to, in which he said that everything he knew about evolution he learned from reading Richard Dawkins’ book and then proceeded to describe two other giants of biology as nut cases, that he would—. He never finished the sentence, never said specifically what he’d do if I published it. Ironically, another leading theoretical physicist I interviewed told me he based part of his cosmology theory on the thinking of one of the biologists Susskind trashed in the interview.
Just a thought, reading that quoted paragraph above: Might science writers benefit from a hashtag: #NotUsToo – because we actually don’t put up with threats, etc.?
On the other hand, in my experience (of which old people often have a lot), once we have established the fact that we won’t cover for unprofessional stuff, we probably don’t need the hashtag. The younger folk have more fun with Twitter meltdowns than older hacks would anyhow. – O’Leary for News
See also: Astrophysicist Niayesh Afshordi explains the holograph universe to Suzan Mazur at Oscillations