Perspective is a very subjective thing, and a new paper from the Vienna University of Technology has put forward a mind-blowing theory: that the universe is nothing more than a hologram.

The universe looks three-dimensional to us, but a theory called the “holographic principle” suggests that the universe has fewer dimensions than we might think — and what we perceive as three dimensions is really just a two-dimensional process broadcast over a massive cosmic horizon, according to a news release put out by the university.

Most people know what a hologram is: it’s two-dimensional, but they look three-dimensional because of how it is overlaid on, say, a credit card or a bank note. Essentially, the theory suggests that the entire universe is a two-dimensional information structure that is “painted” on the horizon, so from our perspective it appears three-dimensional.

We describe gravity in a three-dimensional setting, but we predict quantum particles in just two spatial dimensions, and then map the two calculations together.

This results in an anti-de-sitter-space, which is negatively curved — in other words, if an object is thrown away on a straight line, it will return at some point. Our universe, on the other hand, is considered flat, and has a positive curvature on astronomic distances.

But this principle, known as the correspondence principle, could also be true for our real universe, and scientists have created gravitational theories that would live in a flat space rather than require exotic anti-de-sitter spaces.

There’s no proof of a hologram-type universe yet, but the findings present growing evidence that the correspondence principle is valid.