Snip!t from collection of Alan Dix

<p>A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.</p> <div class="img img-right" style="width:166px"> <div class="img-content" style="padding:1px"> <img src="/polopoly_fs/7.12926.1386339866!/image/top-picks_final.png_gen/derivatives/fullsize/top-picks_final.png" alt=""> <p class="caption"></p><ul> <li><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/dyslexia-linked-to-brain-communication-breakdown-1.14301">Dyslexia linked to brain communication breakdown</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-funding-shuffle-alarms-planetary-scientists-1.14304">NASA funding shuffle alarms planetary scientists</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/killer-qualities-of-japanese-fault-revealed-1.14316">Thin, weak layer of clay was behind Japan earthquake and tsunami</a></li> </ul><p></p> </div> </div> <p>In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed^{<a class="ref-link" title="Maldacena, J. M. Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2, 231&#x2013;252 (1998)." id="ref-link-1" href="#b1">1</a>} that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.</p>