The undeniable message of AdS/CFT is that, at least in this special snow globe, the rules of gravity and the rules of quantum mechanics are secretly describing the same game — despite the storied antagonism between the two theories. “Far from being opposed, they’re actually intertwined,” said Brian Swingle(opens a new tab), a physicist at Brandeis University. “One emerges from the other.”
The correspondence came as a shock. I think of it as akin to discovering a way of converting any checkers move into a valid chess move: Why on Earth would that work? When I ran that picture by Sebastian Mizera(opens a new tab), a physicist at Columbia University who studies the mathematical structure of quantum theories, he told me it wasn’t dramatic enough. “That’s a good analogy,” he said, except “it’s more like checkers and basketball.”
I had heard that holography suggested that gravity and quantum mechanics are one and the same, and that space might be an illusion. I had also heard holography described both as a mathematical fact and as a speculative flight of fancy. So I tried to triangulate these wild ideas and figure out what, exactly, the holographic principle implies about our universe.
You have to love this stuff even if it is a mind bender. The holography idea has been around for some time and has entered the culture but it is still a big mystery.
Also, note the above.