Holography

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Holography is a technique for creating records (holograms) of the light scattered by an object. Holograms are interpreted by the observer as looking at a three-dimensional object through a two-dimensional window. Unlike photography (that creates two-dimensional projections) and stereography (that uses binocular vision to create an illusion of seeing a 3D scene in the brain), holography does not represent the object from a fixed viewpoint, but from a range of possible viewpoints - looking at a hologram from different angles will give different views of its contents, as if the viewer was looking from different angles at a real object.

In fiction, "holograms" usually refer to three-dimensional images projected into thin air. So, in popular culture, any kind of 3D projection technology, real or imagined, is going to be called a "hologram".

Holograms, being weird, are often the subject of different kinds of science woo that usually ascribes to them special, magical properties. (The situation is similar to the one with crystals, which lends weight to the hypothesis that humans and magpies are closely related.)

There is also the strange claim that our universe is a hologram, known as the Holographic Principle: descriptions here [1] and here [2] and here [3]; the case against here [4].

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