Scientists are trying to find out if the universe is a hologram

Not to blow your mind but the universe might actually be a hologram. Or that's one hypothesis being tested by scientists in America.

Theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena first proposed the holographic principle in 1997. Essentially it suggests life as we know it could be an optical illusion created by light defraction.

Researchers at America's Fermi National Laboratory in Illinois explain it in slightly simpler terms, saying "much like characters on a television show would not know that their seemingly 3D world exists only on a 2D screen, we could be clueless that our 3D space is just an illusion."

So to find out if we are actually living in a hologram, scientists are (metaphorically) trying to get close enough to the TV screen to see its pixels using a (real) contraption called the Holometer.

As Craig Hogan, the director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics said somewhat unnecessarily: "If we see something, it will completely change ideas about space we’ve used for thousands of years."