[gshubert17]

The August 2014 issue of Scientific American had an article by Afshordi, Mann, and Pourhasan entitled "The Black Hole That Birthed the Big Bang" on a holographic theory of the universe.

The article [0] is paywalled, but the preview contains a note from a reader suggesting "the holographic principle shares the same problems of all Idealist notions: rather than relying on evidence, it puts the elegance of the model first as an argument in its favor."

I hope the Fermilab experiments provide some useful data.

[0] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-black-hole-tha...

[chton]

That's definitely a valid criticism, and one that can be levelled to a lot of popular theories like string theory (where holographic theory originates from) and quantum loop gravity. It's a short-term problem though, since we're more and more capable of searching for the needed evidence.

[xico]

Yeah, formalizing thoughts into models, and then testing them to validate or invalidate them is sooo idealist. I wish scientists would only rely on common sense and holy books, trusting their guts to do the right thing.

[marcosdumay]

The alternative is first collecting empirical results that current theories do not explain, and only then work on a model for explaining them.