Joakim: This is a very well-written look at the holographic principle -- thank you. I particularly enjoyed the diagram, which provided an "ah-hah" moment for me (although upon reflection, I may have preferred to see "information based physics" at the very bottom, with quantum gravity emerging upward).
One question of clarification: Does the number of bits, which for our universe you calculate as 10^123, encode the *total* amount of information in our present universe, or the *maximum* (i.e., potential) amount of information? It seems that a universe containing very little information could be encoded on a large surface with very little entropy, whereas a universe "saturated" with information would be encoded on a surface with maximum entropy. Perhaps ours in somewhere in between.
Best of luck in the contest.
