Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation

[3tmk]

I have a good way to test this

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god
noclip
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Nope, it isn't working.

[Marbur66]

Originally Posted by dars-dm

What if our Universe was created billions of years ago (or billions of years ahead) by us when we started the program, i. e. the Universe is Escher-like?

Mind = blown

[Mornnb]

Pointless conservation, might as well ask what if our universe comes from an egg laid by a giant duck?

[Fallout]

Originally Posted by FREKI

Advancement in technology doesn't change the physics we live under..

There is absolutely no doubt that advances in technology will bring better simulation rendering, but the scale of the universe on a subatomic level is math on a scaleit seems few understand..


On average in the universe a kg of matter will have around 10^26 atoms.. Of 3 subparticles each that again is made up of 3 quacks ect ect...

So your average milk has at least 9000000000000000000000000000 parts that needs rendering based on temperature, space-time location, interaction, gravity, velocity ect ect..

Maybe the simulation generates approximate solutions based on statistical mechanics and create more exact solutions only if somebody watches them (eg. separate atoms appear only if you observe them).

Anyway, I am afriad what could happen when we learn the answer. Won't it create some kind of system error? Anyone heard something about possible end of world coming soon?

[PaulFCB]

So a computer simulation, made by some very smart programmers who argh making fun of us making us think everything is actually real, but who made them in the first place?

[Hanyuu222]

Originally Posted by dars-dm

What if our Universe was created billions of years ago (or billions of years ahead) by us when we started the program, i. e. the Universe is Escher-like?

Most likely what happened imo.

Universe=quantum computer

[BE0GRAD]

Originally Posted by FREKI

Think of it like this, if you need to add a colour value to a digital object ( lets say black ) you would pick that colour value, not trillions of colours mixed for that result..


In the world of philosophy where this simulation belongs there could be unlimited computing power from our perspective and thus everything could be a simulation in theory, but when looking on it with sceptical eyes there's so many unessesary calculations in even the smallest particle..

The Higgs mechanism is the perfect example - here we have something so CPU intensive to do something so simple - as a natural effect it happens automatically as there is only one natural outcome, but in a simulation it makes even an atom so CPU intensive it's unlikely the entire planets computer force could render the effect real time and that's a fraction of a visible object ( a grain of sand will have around 78.000.000.000.000.000.000 atoms all needing constant processing that again needs to be calculated trough it's movement in spacetime not to mention it's interaction with nearby objects all with their own gravitational fields and electromagnetic radiation ect ect ect )

If I rolled a glass marble down the street on a sunny day natural effects will happen instantly - think of the reflections trough the marble differing from every possible angle - as a result of the laws of physics and quantum mechanics it's the only outcome possible for the photons bouncing around, just as it is for any other particle - no GPU or CPU stress just cause and effect.. try rendering that right down to smallest level of quantum physics and it becomes a processor intensive nightmare just the visuals passing trough the glass not to mention every little string in action in multiple dimensions and then look at the universe and scale of it - so many things happening at various points at various times - the stress on the processor/s would never be at one level but fluctuate greatly and be bound to cause lag..

And we now know space-time itself also have mass so we are left with more subatomic particles troughout the universe than all the servers and hardrives on Earth can ever be able to store in the form of .s - and that brings us to something interesting as when even the smallest . takes up physiclal space on a harddrive the computer nedded to render the universe would very likely be larger than our solar system just to be able to physically store the data...


So as far as philosophy it's an interesting thought, but from a realistic perspective it wouldn't make any sense to render the universe the way we can see it is.. So as such a dog's dream is the more likely scenario as at least there you can have conciousness and all you don't see or feel doesn't have to be "rendered"..

Your scepticism is similar to a scepticism of a caveman believing people will never be able to fly. Computing power of today is indeed more than insufficient to simulate the universe but if we take Moore's law into concideration, we'll have a computing power trillions of trillions times more powerful than human brain in just 20 years time. If that can be achieved in 20 years, imagine the computing power in 100 or 1000 years. The point will come where we will have both sufficient knoledge and computing power to make simulations on the scale of a universe.

[AnOldBlackMarble]

Originally Posted by Turknology

we will find out next Friday

Why, you think it is running on Microsoft?

[joshsam]

Originally Posted by Mornnb

I know. I live in The Matrix, otherwise known as Sydney. This is Pitt Street, with the fountain at Martin Place. Feels just like this in real life.

Brussels is even worse with all the bureaucrats. Grey and black suits under a constant grey sky with nice intervalls of days with non stop rain

[Rev Stickleback]

There's a guy at work who'll go nuts for this kind of stuff.

He'll passionately talk computing and physics (even at the pub!) and waffle on about quantum mechanics, the latest developments in dark matter theory and on-going two-week discussions about laser beams he's having with his house-mate.

Mention this to him, and I'm sure it'd be Thursday before I even got a word in edgeways.

Despite all this stuff he knows about, he did also admit in the last week or so that he didn't know Estonia was a country, and he had never heard of the Spanish pronunciation of Jesus.

[OldKool]

the fact is , there is nor reality or unreality , it is just point of view.

[pobre diablo]

I sometimes think we live inside a huge animal and we don't realize it. Like the natural bacteria inside our intestines.

[joshsam]

Originally Posted by pobre diablo

I sometimes think we live inside a huge animal and we don't realize it. Like the natural bacteria inside our intestines.

dammid we would be really bad for our host. Just waiting untill its immune system starts fighting back eh? :d

[pobre diablo]

Natural disasters might be immune responses and/or medications.

[AltinD]

[FREKI]

Originally Posted by BE0GRAD

Your scepticism is similar to a scepticism of a caveman believing people will never be able to fly. Computing power of today is indeed more than insufficient to simulate the universe but if we take Moore's law into concideration, we'll have a computing power trillions of trillions times more powerful than human brain in just 20 years time.

First of all no we wouldn't, second the laws of physics also means a limit to exponential growth in computing power why we have seen a decrease in advancement and a Moore's law that doesn't fit reality!

Nano technology is limited by the atomic scale and so is our advancement in computing power...

Originally Posted by BE0GRAD

If that can be achieved in 20 years, imagine the computing power in 100 or 1000 years. The point will come where we will have both sufficient knoledge and computing power to make simulations on the scale of a universe.

It doesn't work like that, even digital data takes up physcial storage, meaning that if you had to cataloque the universe right down to every single subparticle, you would need more space and matter than the universe itself!

A single value like a letter or number takes up 8 binary figures, meaning that even if we could make the smallest possible nano computer each value would still take up 8 atoms.. ( realistic dream technology would need at the very least 64 atoms, so I'm cutting your idea a LOT of slack ) and each subatomic particle simulated, each boson and string would need to have it's position and all data stored in in the huge multidimensional grid billions of lightyears wide with a scale under subatomic size - and it would need additional data such as velocity, influence on other particles as well as influence from others, time, field, gravitational pull etc etc etc.. so basically even the smallest particle would take up GBs of data ( a GB would at best take up 68,8 billion atoms ) thus you would need many many times 206,4 billion atoms for the data of 1 atom and thus many many times 206,4billion times the mass of the universe to even get a harddrive large enough to store the data of the universe!

( and that's just the data for the universe, not the physical structure to store and read the data, not to mention the computer processor that could juggle all the data at the same time in real time )


Even the most advanced universe simulation done these days doesn't even have as many particles as a grain of sand.. and the largest full featured universe physics simulation so far was done at a scale the size of an atomic nucleus ( around 2 femtometer in diameter! ) and at a extremely slow pace - so we can't even simulate a single atom yet over years.. and there are roughly 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 visual atoms in the universe and very likely many 1000s that when included the matter locked up in black holes!


Put in another way even if Moore's law wasn't limited by physics and could go on for ever it would take billions of years before reaching the theoretic needed computing power and then we would need more mass than there are in a trillion universes to build a computer that could - and that would of course be impossible as gravity would make make even tiny parts of that computer cave in on itself and cause black holes..



So to sum up - in the real world it's not physically possible by a long shot - it belongs in the world of phylosophy like theology and mythology..

[zaphod]

I'd think you would need an equal quantity of matter and energy to perfectly simulate the universe, making the whole thing untenable.

Simulating the universe in an abstract way, on the other hand, would be different.

[BE0GRAD]

Originally Posted by FREKI

First of all no we wouldn't, second the laws of physics also means a limit to exponential growth in computing power why we have seen a decrease in advancement and a Moore's law that doesn't fit reality!

Nano technology is limited by the atomic scale and so is our advancement in computing power...

This professor would disagree with you. According to him, as soon as 2020's we will be able to but a single bit on a single atom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bxzb1ICsG0

Originally Posted by FREKI

It doesn't work like that, even digital data takes up physcial storage, meaning that if you had to cataloque the universe right down to every single subparticle, you would need more space and matter than the universe itself!

A single value like a letter or number takes up 8 binary figures, meaning that even if we could make the smallest possible nano computer each value would still take up 8 atoms.. ( realistic dream technology would need at the very least 64 atoms, so I'm cutting your idea a LOT of slack ) and each subatomic particle simulated, each boson and string would need to have it's position and all data stored in in the huge multidimensional grid billions of lightyears wide with a scale under subatomic size - and it would need additional data such as velocity, influence on other particles as well as influence from others, time, field, gravitational pull etc etc etc.. so basically even the smallest particle would take up GBs of data ( a GB would at best take up 68,8 billion atoms ) thus you would need many many times 206,4 billion atoms for the data of 1 atom and thus many many times 206,4billion times the mass of the universe to even get a harddrive large enough to store the data of the universe!

( and that's just the data for the universe, not the physical structure to store and read the data, not to mention the computer processor that could juggle all the data at the same time in real time )


Even the most advanced universe simulation done these days doesn't even have as many particles as a grain of sand.. and the largest full featured universe physics simulation so far was done at a scale the size of an atomic nucleus ( around 2 femtometer in diameter! ) and at a extremely slow pace - so we can't even simulate a single atom yet over years.. and there are roughly 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 visual atoms in the universe and very likely many 1000s that when included the matter locked up in black holes!


Put in another way even if Moore's law wasn't limited by physics and could go on for ever it would take billions of years before reaching the theoretic needed computing power and then we would need more mass than there are in a trillion universes to build a computer that could - and that would of course be impossible as gravity would make make even tiny parts of that computer cave in on itself and cause black holes..



So to sum up - in the real world it's not physically possible by a long shot - it belongs in the world of phylosophy like theology and mythology..

All you say is true ... if we limit our selves to silicon based transistors. But we won't ,and that's where your claim fails badly. Most probable successor to silicon ,which becomes unstable at atomic scales, is graphene but that still wouldn't be enough for simulations of universe.

However, what is more than sufficient for making a universe scale simulations is something which goes way beyond binary system which, as you've noticed, is very restrictive at computations of huge scales and that is quantum computing which already exists today in a very primitive state. With further development of quantum computing as well as other ,even better, forms of computing not even discovered yet computation will not only become faster and more powerful , but also less demanding in terms of energy, space, mass or other...

...so yes, it is only a question of time before simulations become possible not only on the scale of a universe but also on the scale of multiverse.

[AnOldBlackMarble]

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[AnOldBlackMarble]

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