I’m taking a quick break at work right now but a couple of weeks ago there was some hooplah over the possibility of evidence that we live in a holographic universe. I read those thread(s) and foound them fascinating.
So…
Assuming we do, in fact, live in a holographic universe…are they any practical devices that could make use of it? Star travel faster than light…that sort of thing?
{please disragrd atrociuos speling}
The theory entails that the “resolution” of the universe be “grainier” than we expected, I wonder if that might someday bring some processes to reach that might have been more difficult if the resolution was finer. I can’t really imagine what those processes might be though.
The biggest practical implication is that if these results really are due to the Universe being holographic, then it means that we can practically build human-scale things to probe quantum gravity, which may actually lead to a theory of quantum gravity (as opposed to the half-assed models we have now like the String Model). Where precisely that theory might lead, I don’t think we can really say until we’ve seen what it is, but it would probably be big.
There are two fundamental approaches that physicists take to fundamental research. The first is epitomized by a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. A bystander asked him what the use was of a particular scientific advance, to which Franklin allegedly replied “What use is a newborn baby?”. In other words, it may not have a use now, and we may not know what use it will be, but it almost certainly will have some use in the future once it’s matured.
The other approach is that epitomized in a quote by Richard Feynman: “Physics is like sex-- It may lead to practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”. Personally, this is the approach I take: It’s all well and good if we get useful technologies out of it, but to me, understanding of the Universe is itself reward enough.
Someone famous but cannot remember who said “There is nothing more practical than a good theory”. Having, in my work, actually created new, practical ‘things’ just from exploring a theory…I agree with this. 
I know nothing about the holographic theory but what I’ve heard…something about the universe being a ‘projection’ of a 2-D surface?? If that is the case, couldn’t we bypass the projection and travel on the 2-D surface?..that something that looks far away really isn’t?
Probably a stupid thought…but that was something like what I was thinking in proposing the question
Not exactly… What we think of as “we” is still three-dimensional, and localized in three dimensions, but the medium in which the information is actually stored is two-dimensional, and the information which comprises any individual localized object in the 3-d space is spread out over the entire 2-d space in a complicated manner. A hologram is a very close analogy to this behaviour, hence the name of the hypothesis, but unfortunately most folks don’t really understand holograms, either, so it’s not so good for explaining it to layfolks.