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Is the Universe its own Largest Computer?
missingmatterboy writes: "If the universe is simply a giant calculating machine, how big is it? Seth Lloyd, who two years ago worked out the theoretical maximum possible power a laptop computer could posess, has now "estimated how much information the Universe can contain, and how many calculations it has performed since the Big Bang." His conclusion: you'd need about 10^90 bits, with something like 10^120 manipulations of those bits, to express the universe since time began."
how many significant digits do you have to have?:)
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...42!
Infuriate left and right
wouldn't the calculation of it just add to the total number of calculations that the universe has made?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into business for themselves.
A beowulf cluster of universes?!
...as the Windows XP installer.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I guess the fact we don't have weekly big-bangs indicates the universe doesn't run a certain OS out of Redmond :)
UNIX *is* user-friendly. Its just more selective on who its friends are. --Scott Adams
I only got 10^90 - 1 bits and 10^120 -2 calculations.
Back to the drawing board..
Best Windows Freeware
2 to the power of NEAL. (Cowboy that is);
that should acurately describe the size...
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
the answer, as everyone knows, is 42.... (I miss him already :( ..... )
....er wait... wrong computer... sorry, sorry, terribly sorry... dah well, back to monty python
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
CPUs always do something, even if it's just look for something to do when "idle". Unless it uses the STOP / WAIT instruction to wait for something to wake it up. Maybe that's what the big bang was...
Infuriate left and right
If one plans on estimating the calculations (apparently changes) the universe has performed, how can you even make a guess when we still don't even know precisely how old the universe is, and how much matter there is?
And also, why does everything have to be made into a computer of some sort? DNA, and now the whole universe?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
The Universe is not the Universe's largest calculator. That title belongs to Earth. Everybody knows that who has read the Hitchhiker's Guide.
What is 8 times 7?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Like many of the other socially handicapped computer geeks here on slashdork, I was excited about this whole concept. The Universe as a giant computer is an extremely cool idea, IMO.
But then I reconsidered. After all, if the whole galactical starscape that spreads before us as we gaze into the night sky is in the end a really gigantor computer, then, well, the Athlon by my desk starts to look pretty puny.
All of a sudden, when faced with the sheer computatorial power represented by the glorious heavens above, things like "operating system," "information superhighway," and "porn" start to stop meaning so much.
In a world where we're all part of a gigantical computer, who gives a shooting starfuck about Linux?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Does anyone know of a good site for videogame PC/Console reviews that isn't gamespot.com (subscription) or gamefaqs.com (crappy, 10 year old written reviews)?
Thanks a lot, sorry bout the offtopic.
...if the universe has performed 10^120 operations and it's about 20 billion years old, it's running at about 4*10^90 gigahertz. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
The article implies there hasn't been enough time for each bit/particle in the universe to have been "flipped" more than once, which further implies that the universe is NOT a computer. However, the number of particles mentioned is that in out 3D/4D (space / spacetime) universe. With superstring theory postulating extra dimensions up to 10 or 11 all "curled up" out of our sight, maybe this is where extra particles/bits are located to support the universe as a computer?
I want a beowulf cluster of those.
that information was already obsolete at press-time, given continual universal expansion.
Liora
In refence to using "pings" to perform calculations, and using the game of life to generate prime numbers...
it would be neat if we could use the universe as a copmuter to play a huge interactive game like The Sims.
Maybe one day.
-... ---
so what's beyond the the boundries? a solid chunk of matter, or nothingness, nothingness which would then be part of the universe, or maybe it automaticall transports you to the otherside of the universe, or hell, maybe you just fall off the side
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
What if the universe were a giant burrito? How many people could it feed? Hopefully Taco Bell will fund my research, or at least offer me some coupons or something. On top of everything else, science should also be yummy.
This is my sarcastic way of saying I don't understand what the $%^@! this guy is trying to sell us by saying the universe is a computer.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The article states using quantum states to determine bits, but what about the simple location of a particle in space. Since movement is continuous and it passes through an infinite set of points, isn't there an infinite set of possibilities for that particle to be placed? If somebody didn't tell me that the world had a discrete matrix of locations, then I'm terribly mistaken.
Philosophistry
I contest the notion that the universe "contains information." The universe simply is. ;-)
Any "information" is a mere mental construct we impose on it (i.e., it's not really contained in the universe.)
If I propose that the universe "contains" information that the sun is yellow is that *really* in the universe somewhere or merely a label I have via my sense organs, thoughts and cultural influence?
Think about it...and in the process add to the information "conatined" in the universe.
Wonder if I can file a patent on it and make everyone pay me licensing fees for existing.
Bullshit. Explain to me how the Universe is the "Largest Computer".
Well, I use the Earth's rotation compared to the sun and make choronological estimates as to when it's lunch time.
"Derp de derp."
since I am so original and witty, i must make an obscure geek reference. I, of course will be the only one to come up with this, nevermind the 499 people that did it in front of me...
THE ANSWER IS OF COURSE 42!!
I am so smart you are so stupid.
hey.. fuckass... not all of us sit around and hit reload every three fucking seconds... fucking trolls....
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Beowulf cluster of these???
Had to be said!
.K
Enig? Det alt for hot det smor!
That would explain too why evolution takes millions of year... though it would explain too why it simply works.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
I bet windows can be bloated enough to suck up that much computing power....
It runs unix.
Can the universe be a computing machine? Can you split it up into sections of input, computation, and output? Does it store and retrieve data? I think a more in depth analysis of this topic would be more interesting.
...since that's essentially what he's doing. this is meaningless, ridiculous, serves no purpose. the universe *might* be a calculator, we *might* be able to comprehend the universe... but i'm sorry - this is pure wankery and a waste of time. this guy's talent could be put to better use. in other words, it could be put to a USE.
jesus. shit like this just pisses me off.
Who is doing the calculations using the Universe?
And has Golgafrincham gone in the Universe constructing business?
The mind boggles. One wonders what the question is to this all (we know the answer is 42).
Given their current (known and unkown) computers, how long until they crack the Universe?
And does that mean that once they cracked it, no matter what cipher or keylength or passphrase I use, they'll be able to decrypt my messages?
But if you work there, please don't give the winner of the World Cup. I wan't to see it live as everyone else.
So... there are only 10^10 bits of unique information to be bookkept for every elementary particle? I find this intuitively inadequte. The precision needed just for locating the particle in the vastness of the universe is immense. Not to mention derivatives of this value wrt time...
Of course, we could see a lot more improvement if we used quantum computing.
Oh, wait - that's already been done! We're part of it.
I can see the fnords!
I want a beowulf cluster of these. Oh, well...
....
a beowulf cluster of these..
you'd need about 10^90 bits, with something like 10^120 manipulations
Yeah, but it's still only 4 lines of code.
(18 months per double; 10^120 =~= 2^399; 1.5 years * 399 = 598.5 years)
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Then again, I'm hardly a cosmologist, so YMMV.
Mike
I wish that article had given more detail. It seems to me that things like motion and time would not be able to accuratly be coverted into a digital representation and still be accurate enough to represent the entire universe. Wouldn't you have to calculate it with a vector based system? If he wasn't using a vector system then that number 10^90 or whatever it was would probably be significantly smaller.
So if we are currently a part of a giant algorithym, if we ever actually create a computer capable of simulating the whole thing, would the first person to do it be able to patent it? Also, in order to figure out what happened at creation you would have to reverse engenier the whole thing. Wouldn't that be a DCMA violation?
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
...about this story, and the superficial bits I gathered about Wolfram's cellular automata / complexity work discussed here a couple of weeks ago, plus superstring / M-space cosmology, is how closely current scientific orthodoxy resembles the sort of stuff I used to scribble down at 5 am as the acid wore off (back when I was a student, fifteen years ago.) So, the universe is a giant, cellular automata, acting as a computer, runnign (presumably) a simulation of itself. No doubt this complex a system has become self-aware too. Riiiiiggghhhhttt... sheesh, no wonder I ended up a Perl programmer. It's the only language that makes sense.
Back in the days there was a talk about how a google is so big until the physical universe cannot come up with enough things to even come close to it:
mass of solar system is ~10^23
total number of particles is somewhere around ~10^43
if you break down all the way to planks constant, you will hit around 10^67 ish...
but finally we figured out there is 10^120 worthe of information eh?...
so now lets see what kind of analysis on the universe we can do until it comes to the order of a googleplex!
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Commonly heard around the control rooms of various particle physics experiments I have worked on ...
"The universe is just God's Monte Carlo, created when He/She couldn't solve the necessary Field Equations in closed form -- so quick go generate some more entropy."
Image a beowulf cluster of universes.....
...the universe should be affordable within a few years.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
ok... new competition:
The first to write a nice selfspreading neutronstar-shortcircuit virus get's his own black hole to throw all your enimies into at will.
........
what i don't get.....
What's the physical addresses for the registers?
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
And also, why does everything have to be made into a computer of some sort?
Maybe because its so much easier to think about God as a fellow programmer?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Then I'll have to figure out a way to use these calculations make me wealthy and get me a gorgeous wife. This is in reference to someone else's comment about "socially handicapped computer geeks here on slashdork".
How many FPS can you get on this computer while playing Counter Strike or Doom 3?
What is telling the particles/elements to perform this 'dynamical evolution'? God?
That would be worth reading.
I guess 256 bits of encryption (where each possible combination results in a strong key) will never be brute-forced, then.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
But how fast is it?
...with something like 10^120 manipulations of those bits...
Let's see, the universe is about 15 billion years old. 10^120 floating point operations divided by..mumble..mumble..mumble.. That comes out as roughly 2 * 10^101 flops. If the graphics resolution is about... PI multiplied by 15 billion light years by..mumble..mumble..OH WAIT, it's in 3D..mumble..mumble..HEUREKA!
The graphics performance comes out as EXACTLY 42 FPS.
Hmm. Not too impressive, really.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Perhaps; but Lloyd has a reputation as a challenging lateral thinker, especially in information theory.
A Theory is something that is not proven and is therefore classified as assumption and speculation. It is something that can be niether proven right, nor proven wrong. So, since we are not dealing with facts, Lloyd's thoery is pretty much a stab in the dark for a mathamatical explanation of a theoretical event(the big bang).
-Tolerate my intolerance
dude, that's 1 4M 1337 H4X0R note the 4M, not 3m guess i'm 31337 and you're 1337.
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
With calculating power like that, you /might/ be able to run Doom III at the highest settigs ;)
Colin Davis
According to some theories, the universe is an 11 dimensional finite state machine with a cycle time of 1x10-63second ... Plankt time.
It would seem to be guided by an irrational number calculation something very much like Mandlebrot's x=1/xi but in 11 dimensions.
A VERY simple calculation with chaotic consequences.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The fact that the sun is yellow isn't the kind of information being discussed. The 1948 paper by Shannon in the Bell Systems Technical Journal is the seminal work; or look at this 1995 short course in Information Theory by MacKay at Cavendish Laboratory. While you're at it, stop trolling.
As soon as I looked at the article, I thought "Gee, someone *HAD* to have applied Moore's law to this article"
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
"Really? I just glance at my watch. "
:oP
Sorry, I forgot there's a segment of the Slashdot population that's adverse to going outside once in a while.
"Derp de derp."
It does crash every week, you just don't realize it because you're in the ram.
God sets everything up over 6 days, gets it perfect, takes a break, and BAM, crash.
Unless, of course, it was all instigated by one intelligent being; Possible but unlikely.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
'Since time began' != 'since the big bang'. One of them is something which calculations can be based upon (since the big bang), the other is a statement that refers to an event that nobody is actually sure happened.
Time may very well be infinite, and evidence of such is beyond our comprehension. We're fairly sure that the big bang occured, right? But is anyone fairly sure that time has a beginning?
This is so like in 1984. I'm glad the judge could see the case for what it is.
We should encourage Open Source and the vast legionnaires that aid in the development and peer review of the exceptional code.
sometimes it seems like it must be a beta relase
I Heart Sorting Networks
So the universe is a giant computer eh?
Well, judging by the murky grey industrialised panorama I see from looking out of my window, I would say that it desperately needs a new videocard!
http://www.davetansley.com - you proba
2. ...the rapid expansion phase at the beginning was someone trying to overclock the universe?
3. ...the big crunch comes when MS figures out how to write software for the univsersal computer?
4. ... the CPU manufacturers are right around the corner to making a computer more powerful than universe.
5. ...all the weird stuff at the quantum scale is caused by dereferencing a NULL pointer.
Iaamoac
It's what is 42 - 0.
= 48
One idea that's been floating around in my head for years is that someone should get a supercomputer (or a big Beowulf cluster) and try to run their own sim-universe.
Of course, it'd have to have simplified rules (we don't yet know all the rules to out own universe), and it'd probably have to be with a smaller number of bits (quarks?). But I wonder what kind of results we could get. It'd probably take a bit of tweaking to get the physical laws set up right so that stars form and function, or maybe even planets form (at least gas giants).
Is this project too big to even think about right now?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
universe = 10^90 bits
Therefore, the entire universe can be found at Google.
d, disappointed that "googol" is not spelled "google".
p.s. the word has now lost all meaning to me. google google google. nothing.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
there is actually something that is called googolplex:
10^googol
rather big huh?
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
So since i am part and even this message is part of its computations it doesnt really matter what i do, maybe i should buy a gun and kill some people..
Damn people who say crap like this should be shot, cause they only point out how non important our lives really are.
Hope these words get used correct in the computation and that they are not some syntax errors.
We all know that the earth is computing the ultimate question, right? So why not, the universe could be computing something even greater! It's a shame Adams didn't get to tell us about it. I'm sure he knew.
The universe could have been created by a controlled explosion where a matter/antimatter universe pair were created simultaniously, perhaps with a controlled beginning. Black holes could be used as output devices, spitting out vast streams of data that a higher intellegence could be collecting and analyzing.
:)
But what kind of program? Perhaps its something as trivial as a complex "Game of Life" scenario. Perhaps the universe itself is trivial in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps it represents a single CPU in a vast SMP system of trillions upon Trillions of other processors. Imagine the framerate on THAT monster.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
With this data one should be able to calculate the mass of a bit of information. (Construct an experiment to prove your calculations). Also, use Albert's clasic equation to determine the energy of a bit of information. Determine how much energy is released if you empty the windows desktop trahs bin icon.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You can't specify the position of a particle to greater precision than its wavelength, so the number of distinguishable positions a particle can have is finite and depends on its energy.
But it doesn't take a genius to get at it.
--exa--
The ambient temperature of the universe from background radiation is 2.7 degrees Kelvin. Find yourself a handy dandy superfluid helium heat sink that fits nicely around the galactic core... any high school kid can figure out how to do that, and you can lower that to 1.7 degrees Kelvin! I haven't tried it yet at home, but I bet you could pull another 12^100 manipulations out of it over the next trillion years!
;-P
I hear that Intel finally plans to release their new line of Higgs Boson based universe macroprocessors next year, and that will of course leave all of these benchmarks in the dust, but I'm sure some hobbyist will find a way to overclock those universes as well. AMD has tried to do some tesseract-based preemptive processing, but the Matrix System Agents doesn't think that extra juice is needed to continue fooling the human batteries that the universe is just one big number crunch, so they may lose market share.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Isn't the Universe an analog sytstem?
It's nice that he decided that changes in quantum state are equivilent to 'bits', the changes in the universe also happen without a quantum state change. He also doesn't acount for the movement of sub-atomic particles, or even the number of quantum states of each paricle. These 'bits' in his formula could not be binary for sure.
Hence it seems to me his equation is flawed in attempting to express the universe as a digital computer. Perhaps he should re-state the problem and look at the universe as an analog computer like it really is.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Imagine a Beowolf cluster of these things?
In all seriousness though, did you get my point?
"Derp de derp."
If the universe is a giant computer, why waste computing power on the un-observed? If I were optimizing the "master program", i'd use an LOD algorithm to approximate to the level needed for the observer(s).
For example, Newtonian physics is perfectly acceptable for macro level observations, and only those observers (physicists) who are researching sub-atomic particles need to be "shown" the low-level quantum phenomena in question. Otherwise, even complex phenomena such as DNA replication, sub-atomic particle interactions, etc., can be approximations.
For most of the observable universe, it's the macro-level result of any of these interactions that is meaningful to the masses.
The "Universal Computer" could be less powerful than we think. "What is the Matrix?", indeed.
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
So that's what stars are... overclocked and overworked cpus!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The greatest musicians, most gifted artists, and noted monumental minds in the history of this world have focused their works, attributed their talents, and credited their wisdom to God alone. How is it that we think we are smarter than those who have come before us and foolishly ponder finite material items cabaple of creating, as only God can?
Great. I can finally write a defragmenting program for my office.
On a serious note, I disagree. There's a difference between giving numbers for a computer that would completely predict all events that ever happened on a causal basis and saying that causality's evolution itself is a computer. It's like saying, "I need X computer to find out where this mouse will be in the maze in 10 minutes, so the mouse in the maze must be the equivalent of X computer."
~Ben
Tonight at 9:00 PM (Eastern Time) Discovery Channel (Channel 42) features a one hour program on the origins of the Universe.
In this feature, of which 21 minutes is devoted to NCSA produced visualizations, which includes the spectacular rendition of a flight from earth to the massive black hole on the center of our galaxy.
21 minutes of NCSA rendered graphics...yummm..
So dont miss it, even if you werent a space geek. Being a graphics fan would do fine.
Rapid Nirvana
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of those?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
You have to put into account those 600 years that it'd also have to simulate...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The universe is really a spreadsheet, and since spreadsheets can be Turing equivalent, it's a good reason to call it a computer.
This spread sheet is three dimensional, with each cell corresponding to a cartesian coordinate based on the center of the universe at 0,0,0. Each cell of the spreadsheet is no bigger than the smallest thing, which is the Planke length. Each formula in the cells is really what Wolfram was talking about. Simple formulas, repeated endlessly through each cell of the spreadsheet. There are of course smaller dimensions, and what that means is that there is an embedded spreadsheet (or several) located inside of each cell.
Strangely enough, there are more reasons to believe that the similarity is more than superficial. For example, wrapping of text in a spreadsheet is referred to by scientists as "diffraction" and it can change the course of a light wave. Black holes are thought by some to be where the universe is dividing by zero. Don't laugh, it's true!
Mathematics can be used to compute all of the universe's gyrations with great accuracy. That begs the question, what came first? Math, or the universe? Almost all mathematicians nowadays think that math came first, which naturally leads to the idea that computer programs were invented before computers. This makes a lot of sense. It's a fascinating topic, really. If you're lucky enough to be in college right now and taking math classes, you've got an opportunity to approach your math professor after class and talk to him about these ideas. If that prof got their PhD in the past year or two, they'll know exactly what you're talking about. Profs who got their PhD's more than two years ago probably won't know about it. These are really new and exciting ideas! Just keep asking and find a prof who knows about these ideas. Trust me, it'll be a fascinating experience and will change your life.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Calculating the Universe impossible from within it is impossible, because you would have to calculate the aforementioned calculations, which would put you into an infinite recursive loop.
A beowulf cluster of these!
worked out the theoretical maximum possible power a laptop computer could posess
I didn't read about this, but it seems that unless he absolutely and rigidly defined what a laptop is (which I don't think is necessarily definable considering what a "portable" from 30 years ago was and therefore what it might mean in another 30 years) he is going to feel very silly and very wrong in a short while.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Well, I'm definately not the first one to point at Adam's giant computer the size of a planet (First person who hasn't read the trilogy to guess which planet it is gets a cookie; first person to laugh at the word trilogy gets two cookies) but I'll do it anyway. *Points at his feet*
I've always been fond of the idea that space, like time, is an unmeasurable quantity, at least in the dimensions we are capable of percieving. Not everything can fit in that neat little box that we can hold a ruler up to.
Love and Peace,
Valen
"The best compliment a girl ever gave me was 'Your hair smells nice.' I hate being the platonic friend." -Valen
There are numerous researchers who have said that the multiverse (of which our universe is of course just a tiny part) has a total information content of essentially zero.
Those of you with too much time on your hands may enjoy Schmidhuber's 1996 paper, A Computer Scientist's View of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
And check out the Everything List archives too.
--| THE TRANSITION FROM THE EMPIRICAL TO THE IDEAL |---
We take hold of a warm object, for example. The scientist will tell us: What you are calling the heat or warmth is the effect on your own nerves. Objectively, there is the movement of molecules and atoms. These you can study, after the laws of mechanics. So then they study the laws of mechanics, of atoms and molecules; indeed, for a long time they imagined that by so doing they would at last contrive to explain all the phenomena of Nature. Today, of course, this hope is rather shaken. But even if we do press forward to the atom with our thinking, even then we shall have to ask - and seek the answer by experiment - How are the forces in the atom? How does the mass reveal itself in its effects, - how does it work? And if you put this question, you must ask again: How will you recognize it? You can only recognize the mass by its effects.
The customary way is to recognize the smallest unit bearer of mechanical force by its effect, in answering this question: If such a particle brings another minute particle - say, a minute particle of matter weighing one gramme - into movement, there must he some force proceeding from the matter in the one, which brings the other into movement. If then the given mass brings the other mass, weighing one gramme, into movement in such a way that the latter goes a centimetre a second faster in each successive second, the former mass will have exerted a certain force. This force we are accustomed to regard as a kind of universal unit. If we are then able to say of some force that it is so many times greater than the force needed to make a gramme go a centimetre a second quicker every second, we know the ratio between the force in question and the chosen universal unit. If we express it as a weight, it is 0.001019 grammes' weight. Indeed, to express what this kind of force involves, we must have recourse to the balance - the weighing-machine. The unit force is equivalent to the downward thrust that comes into play when 0.001019 grammes are being weighed. So then I have to express myself in terms of something very outwardly real if I want to approach what is called ÒmassÓ in this Universe. Howsoever I may think it out, I can only express the concept ÒmassÓ by introducing what I get to know in quite external ways, namely a weight. In the last resort, it is by a weight that I express the mass, and even if I then go on to atomize it, I still express it by a weight.
I have reminded you of all this, in order clearly to describe the point at which we pass, from what can still be determined Òa prioriÓ, into the realm of real Nature. We need to be very clear on this point. The truths of arithmetic, geometry and kinematics, - these we undoubtedly determine apart from external Nature. But we must also be clear, to what extent these truths are applicable to that which meets us, in effect, from quite another side - and, to begin with, in mechanics. Not till we get to mechanics, have we the content of what we call Òphenomenon of NatureÓ.
All this was clear to Goethe. Only where we pass on from kinematics to mechanics can we begin to speak at all of natural phenomena. Aware as he was of this, he knew what is the only possible relation of Mathematics to Natural Science, though Mathematics be ever so idolized even for this domain of knowledge.
To bring this home, I will adduce one more example. Even as we may think of the unit element, for the effects of Force in Nature, as a minute atom-like body which would be able to impart an acceleration of a centimetre per second per second to a gramme-weight, so too with every manifestation of Force, we shall be able to say that the force proceeds from one direction and works towards another. Thus we may well grow accustomed - for all the workings of Nature - always to look for the points from which the forces proceed. Precisely this has grown habitual, nay dominant, in Science. Indeed in many instances we really find it so. There are whole fields of phenomena which we can thus refer to the points from which the forces, dominating the phenomena, proceed. We therefore call such forces Òcentric forcesÓ, inasmuch as they always issue from point-centres. It is indeed right to think of centric forces wherever we can find so many single points from which quite definite forces, dominating a given field of phenomena, proceed. Now need the forces always come into play. It may well be that the point-centre in question only bears in it the possibility, the potentiality as it were, for such a play of forces to arise, whereas the forces do not actually come into play until the requisite conditions are fulfilled in the surrounding sphere. We shall have instances of this during the next few days. It is as though forces were concentrated at the points in question, - forces however that are not yet in action. Only when we bring about the necessary conditions, will they call forth actual phenomena in their surroundings. Yet we must recognize that in such point or space forces are concentrated, able potentially to work on their environment.
This in effect is what we always look for, when speaking of the World in terms of Physics. All physical research amounts to this: we follow up the centric forces to their centres; we try to find the points from which effects can issue, For this kind of effect in Nature, we ate obliged to assume that there are centres, charged as it were with possibilities of action in certain directions. And we have sundry means of measuring these possibilities of action; we can express in stated measures, how strongly such a point or centre has the potentiality of working. Speaking in general terms, we call the measure of a force thus centred and concentrated a ÒpotentialÓ or Òpotential forceÓ. In studying these effects of Nature we then have to trace the potentials of the centric forces, - so we may formulate it. We look for centres which we then investigate as sources of potential forces.
Such, in effect, is the line taken by that school of Science which is at pains to express everything in mechanical terms. It looks for centric forces and their potentials. In this respect our need will be to take one essential step - out into actual Nature - whereby we shall grow fully conscious of the fact: You cannot possibly understand any phenomenon in which Life plays a part if you restrict yourself to this method, looking only for the potentials of centric forces. Say you were studying the play of forces in an animal or vegetable embryo or germ-cell; with this method you would never find your way. No doubt it seems an ultimate ideal to the Science of today, to understand even organic phenomena in terms of potentials, of centric forces of some kind. It will be the dawn of a new world-conception in this realm when it is recognized that the thing cannot be done in this way, Phenomena in which Life is working can never be understood in terms of centric forces. Why, in effect, - why not? Diagrammatically, let us here imagine that we are setting out to study transient, living phenomena of Nature in terms of Physics. We look for centres, - to study the potential effects that may go out from such centres. Suppose we find the effect. If I now calculate the potentials, say for the three points a, b and c, I find that a will work thus and thus on A, B and C, or c on A', B' and C'; and so on. I should thus get a notion of how the integral effects will be, in a certain sphere, subject to the potentials of such and such centric forces. Yet in this way I could never explain any process involving Life. In effect, the forces that are essential to a living thing have no potential; they are not centric forces. If at a given point d you tried to trace the physical effects due to the influences of a, b and c, you would indeed be referring to the effects to centric forces, and you could do so. But if you want to study the effects of Life you can never do this. For these effects, there are no centres such as a or b or c. Here you will only take the right direction with your thinking when you speak thus: Say that at d there is something alive. I look for the forces to which the life is subject. I shall not find them in a, nor in b, nor in c, nor when I go still farther out. I only find them when as it were I go to the very ends of the world - and, what is more, to the entire circumference at once. Taking my start from d, I should have to go to the outermost ends of the Universe and imagine forces to the working inward from the spherical circumference from all sides, forces which in their interplay unite in d. It is the very opposite of the centric forces with their potentials. How to calculate a potential for what works inward from all sides, from the infinitudes of space? In the attempt, I should have to dismember the forces; one total force would have to be divided into ever smaller portions. Then I should get nearer and nearer the edge of the World: - the force would be completely sundered, and so would all my calculation. Here in effect it is not centric forces; it is cosmic, universal forces that are at work. Here, calculation ceases.
Once more, you have the leap - the leap, this time, from that in Nature which is not alive to that which is. In the investigation of Nature we shall only find our way aright if we know what the leap is from Kinematics to Mechanics, and again what the leap is from external, inorganic Nature into those realms that are no longer accessible to calculation, - where every attempted calculation breaks asunder and every potential is dissolved away. This second leap will take us from external inorganic Nature into living Nature, and we must realize that calculation ceases where we want to understand what is alive.
(Rudolf Steiner, The Light Course, Lecture 1)
Light Course, Lecture 1, Rudolf Steiner
Warning: Do not read if you are not Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Okay, 10 ^ 80 fundamental particles. That's a lot.
Then, 10 ^ 90 bits, or 10 ^ 10 bits per particle.
Those 10 ^ 10 bits each particle possesses, can express a meager 2 ^ 10 ^ 10 = 10 ^ 3 billion or so possible values (since 2 ^ 10 = 10 ^ 3). Let's assume that the universe is a cube, with a "resolution" of 10 ^ -24 meters (electrons don't really have a radius, but when you try to measure it all you can say is that it's less than 10 ^ -18 meters, a millionth of that seems safe.)
So, 10 ^ 3 billion numbers can represent positions on three dimensional axese 10 ^ 1 billion "units" long - that's the cubed root.
Even if our pixel is only 10 ^ -24 meters across, we only lose 24 (to meters) and 16 (to light years) decimal orders of magnitude, so that's describes a cube 10 ^ (1 billion - 40) light years on a side.
Realizing that my overclocked, water cooled Duron, which I had thought was so l33t, is nothing compared to the infinite cosmos upon which it is only a tiny speck, I go insane, and start thinking about relativity.
Okay, to say that events that occur at different points in space is actually meaningless. Relativistically nonsensical. It's may be a requirement at the quantum scale, or it may fuzz out somehow from the heizenberg uncertainty principle (which applies to time as well as space,) but anyway - with no real concept of simultaneity shared by different bits of the great computer, how does the universe get anything done? Maybe, the universal background radiation isn't just something we use as a clock, maybe it REALLY IS A CLOCK - a synchronizing pulse.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
SUX0R MY DIX0R
Sure if the universe has a single capturable (e.g. classical) mechanical state at each "point" in time, but "the universe" is possessed of every possible quantum state in each of its friendly little sub-particles at every unobserved "instant" (which itself only has meaning in the context of one of those states).
So, you know, this is just more USA today type masterbation.
On the other hand, did you know that a PentiumII 400mhz cpu has roughly the same MIPS as a Cray2? Now that's a more entertaining factoid if you ask me.
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
RMS asks god to gpl the universe. He replaces the big bang with a kernel panic!
yeah, whatever
011001110110110001100101011011100110001001101111
then everything looks like a nail.
If the universe is a computer then everything must be a calculation. Funny I thought I was more than that.
Wow! ;) I saw God... a lifetime of dreary emptiness has been lifted from my shoulders and I now have a vacation... no... I mean vacation... I off to start the new /. religion. First Pope!
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Murmers in the Night
By: sweetmandalee@hotmail.com
In the summer time, I go to visit my dad, step mother, brothers and the rest of my family in Michigan. They live in a very small place as well as I do. But now, when I visit, there is a new element that I expect to happen other than seeing family and friend. My cousin and I hear the "not-so-there-people" It really all began about 3 summers ago, we were up late one night and we kept hearing people murmuring. We searched the intire house, looked at all the t.v.'s, radio's, and checked for everyone to be in bed. Nobody lives within a mile of them. And no one was around, it was about 1 am, this nightly visit went on for about a hour and a half. This continued the 2 months I was there.Until finally one night, the night before I left back home, I got very brave, stood up and said," Where are you in a calm soft tone" so I dont wake anyone up other than Amy who was already awake with me. All of a sudden the murmers stop and in a low throaty tone we heard," Outside...come on, come out here." We both froze, but I didn't feel threatend by them. Once again I heard murmers and laughter. So, I went outside, as I walked out there, I froze once again. Out there, about 200ft. I would say, there was a bright red truck with it's headlight on, and about 5 teenagers sat there, pale, staring at me, until one of them smiled and said," Come on." I could see them , but barely, they were all very faint and see through, plus it was dark and ectoplaysm circled them. All of a sudden, my Dad burst through the door, he startled me and I turned to him, and looked back but they were gone. Amy told him what was going on. Later, Michael, my other cousin and former owner of the home had told me that a group of teenagers would come there late at night into his barn and engage in premiscuise (can't spell, sorry!) events. But one night, they were all sitting in the back of the truck drinking, and a drunk driver swirved and hit the car, killing them all of impact. This made me cry. I am usually not a really emotional person in public, I am still confused what made me cry. The fact that they were killed so young, that they are unsettled, or what.Anyway's, it happend, to this day Amy and I still hear them murmering, and laughing, but it get's fainter every summer. Whenever I hear them, I go out to see if they are there, but they never are. If you can tell me, why Amy and I are the only one's who hear them, and I can no longer see them, please email me, I am despreate to know.
Nobody has mentioned yet this little nugget: If the universe is a computer then we are but small little threads of the Earth process. And we have no such thing as free will... just private member variables that we're not aware of.
--Rob
Is there a version control system in place? I want check out a previous version and get my old girlfriend back...
c-hack.com |
I've thought about this before, and came to the conclusion that if I ever build my own universe I'm going to need to use data compression of some sort, and kind of fudge the details. I mean, who cares exactly where an electron is, as long as it statistically behaves like it should?
The scary thing is, the more I've learned about quantum mechanics, the more it looks like that's how the universe works.
For instance, gravity seems to have a universal effect. It diminishes over distance, but ultimately never stops having an effect. Thus, for every movement, you'd first need to look at all elements of the "gravity map" to determine your precise gravity vector, then you'd need to update the "gravity map" with your movement. This would seem to have at least an N^2 effect. The universe doesn't seem at least to kludge on things like this.
Many forces act like this, which would tend to make the exponent on the number of bit manipulations required blossom much faster than predicted. Take a look at raytracer graphic design to see how messy reality can be when you introduce more than a couple elements into a scene, much less of course a universe. If one is going for a true simulation of reality, at least force by force, particle by particle, I believe it's going to be more complex than this estimation.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
What about Wolfram's Automatons theory..
/., referenced here:2 /05/21/ 146210&mode=thread&tid=134
Those 4 lines of Mathematica as a base for the whole universe.
I haven't read the 1300~ page book, but I have read the review here on
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0
In a summary, don't take my word for it, I haven't read the book or even remember the article, he explains how there are small components that act very simply but then combine to a huge "world." He says that the whole universe might be a result of a very simple set of rules that expand themselves to what we have today...
^_^
Especially since time is not contiguous, but quantized (ala Planck's Time). We are all in God's computer, with a clock tick of Planck's Time. :)
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
1) Yeah, but it's an ANALOG computer. How passe!
2) Except, it isn't even an analog computer, because there is no analogy involved; no abstractions, nothing representing anything else in a simpler, faster, cheaper or more convenient way.
Remember the map of England in Lewis Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno?" Well, I'm not sure I remember it, but, IIRC it was at a scale of one inch to the inch, so it was extremely accurate, but very annoying when unfolded and spread out.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm looking forward to someone porting NetBSD to it.
BTW he is only talking about the observable universe in considering its computational capacity. For all we know the entire universe is infinite, but we can only see a finite bubble about 13 billion light years in radius. That's the part Lloyd is considering.
...does this mean that in 1000 years when we're going to war with other solar systems that we'll be attaching giant heat sinks to our sun and cooling it via a large tube connected apparatus stretching to pluto?
How can we preserve Natalie Portman to assemble a beowulf cluster of solar systems when a formidable enemy (such as George Lucas' Empire) attempts to reign?
I believe there are many fundamental issues here which need to be addressed...
I mean it!
stop!
GAK!
AGH!
I die.
We live in "The Matrix"
Does that number include the bits required to process and store the computer itself?
I see. :)
"Derp de derp."
The size is too big by a factor of about 100000. If it were something like 10^85, that would be a 256 bit addressing range, indicating we are a simulation, à la "Matrix", or, much better, "The 13th Floor".
"calculated 2 years ago"? Didn't Bremmerman calculated theoretical limit of computation speed back in the sixties? A gram of matter might compute 10^^47 bits per second. If the earth were a solid computer for all its known history, it could have computed a total of 10^^73 bits. If the universe were a computer it could have computed about 10^^100 bits.
What OS will it run? It's an important question. Our current OS wars may presage the battle for ultimate control of the substructure of the entire universe.
Whats the pointing device?
a) Bewitched
b) Buffy
c) Oz
root is a symlink to GOD! /dev/nullt a rs/sun/planets/earth /usr/share/universe/data/galaxies/milky_way/sta rs/sun/planets/earth/people/cowbn
Black holes =
The big bang occured when god bunzip2'ed universe.bz2
No one knows where the kernel is
It uses GODFS.
We live at
/usr/share/universe/data/galaxies/milky_way/s
To get rid of cowboy neal
rm
Meditate
You don't know my secret gay fantasy.
Hot damn! Think of a Beowulf cluster of univ-
Oh, wait...
10^90 is about 2^300 bits
10^120 is about 2^400 operations
Now, can anyone explain to me why anyone would need a cryptographic hash function with a 512 bit output?
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
...and their wild calculations..*sigh* :)
Only demo coders have as much spare time and willingness to let people know about it...
Well at least demo coders end up with useful things for game programming
Yeah yeah those physicists are entertaining too.. what was the last great thing to discuss ?
Ah yes do schroedinger's farts smell if nobody hears them, or something like that...
Cricket is a simplified version of baseball in which there are only two bases, but to confuse you the pitchers periodically change direction. Also, the bats are bigger because cricket players are fuelled by beer, and their coordination isn't so hot.
Relevance? well, this thread is about big numbers. And I think it was the Hungarian humorist George Mikes who said that the English, lacking a religion, invented cricket to give themselves an idea of eternity.
No, I confess, completely off topic.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
If the numbers came out +/- ^9 (or more) places, we'd still be sitting around scratching our asses and thinking what a big number that is. It could be billions of times bigger or billions of times smaller, it wouldn't make a difference, and nobody here, or anywhere, would notice.
Perhaps Steven Wolfram isn't such a nut for suggesting that the rules of such a calculator could fin in three lines of mathematica code.
Imagine the impact of a BSOD on that scale...
The hard part is finding other things u is equivalent to.
BRENT ROCKWOOD, EST'd 1975
The universe is a quantum computer and thus able to solve for multiple results simultaneously. There is WAY more computation going on than this guy thinks. I believe the quantum nature of the universe is just a trick of the almighty to do more work with less particles. See, even the big programmer in the sky is a LAZY coder.
"hmm... if I Just make it impossible to tell where and how fast a particle is going than I can just approximate everything and be held accountable for nothing. WOOHOO! I'm taking Sunday off."
the ultimate question? Perhaps the mice were forced to build an even LARGER computer to find this out...
Depending on how simplified your laws of physics are, there are screensavers right now that would fit the bill.
DNA just wants to be free...
"Everything is computing" - is essentially to understand. Just as: "animal is a machine". Or "man is an animal".
... we will handle it well. Beyond anything imagined before, in the dark ages.
What is the big deal? Facts of life.
I am even glad, that it is so. So, we will be able to reprogram this Universe_program. To make it close to perfect!
What if it was a stupid Bible driven world? Many would go to hell for the eternity. For example.
This way
- Thomas
People seem to respond to these things as if it represented a total reversal/revision of our understanding of existence.
I honestly don't see what difference it makes.
DNA just wants to be free...
considering the big bang is theory, how can one even begin to make calculations?
How about "The universe: God's creation. How many times has man sinned since Adam & Eve? 10^90."
Imagine a ....
Can you say, Douglas Adams?
I'm stupid and obligatory, too!
What everyone has failed to mention is that the current view on our universe is that super-strings are wound up into 10 dimensions. Doesn't this mean that the above calculation would need to be re-figured to account for the additional dimensions? I'm guessing 10^10?
Namaste
How many of us read this headline and thought, "YEAH! FORTY-TWO BABY!!! +5 Funny Karma, here I come! WOO!!!"
>click
D'oh.
There is a Planck length and a Planck time. It is conventionally meaningless to speak of a length or a time that is smaller than these. The following URL explains it easily enough:
2 81 . fm
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae
It would seem that the Universe is inherently "grainy". Perhaps the universe is some sense analog since probability completely rules any time or space frame smaller than that but a digital computer probably isn't a completely bad model to this scale.
I also wonder if photons with a wavelength smaller than the Planck length are possible. Is 1.875x10e34 Ghz the highest possible frequency? If not, do photons of higher frequency have any special properties?
The only thing besides the balloon (surface) is not-the-balloon (be it buildings or air, or, what have you).
Now, if we take the surface of the balloon as our "space", then anything not part of the surface is "not-space".
Unfortunately our definitions of "beyond" and "outside" depend upon space in a way that they do not depend upon a rubber membrane, so the analogy breaks down.
Analogies are only of limited use here.
DNA just wants to be free...
I sincerely hope that there is some galaxy or nebula acting as a firewall, I'd hate to see a JeffK style HaX0r break in and give us some flashing animated gifs everywhere.
... or someone had a lot of free time on his hands to come up with such an answer. I mean, I'd classify this in the category of useless knowledge.
I only have 2 significant digits on my abacus :(
Well yeah, like the subject line says. That is all. Go away.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Actually even on macro scales some quantum effects (e.g. quantum gravity) have observable results. For example, orbits decay faster than they otherwise might because of energy loss through gravitational waves.
DNA just wants to be free...
why are we nerds so uncool?
Then are particle physicists violating the DMCA? Won't be long before the WIPO is trying to shut down CERN, Fermi, et al.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
If this is true than we are part of the computer. One 'big-bang' many stars... people... and computers. To say the universe is one big computer seems like a very primitive idea - considering that Humans have mapped the heavens and used the data to plant crops, eat lunch, etc. The universe created the inventors of the computer, but the universe in not a computer - unless you think that you can calculate PI from the energy of clouds, or garbage. This is typical of the type of message coming from MIT, they think like internet people - 1's and 0's. The point? The universe is analog for every bit out there.
...."How can I get a Beowulf cluster of these?"
:-)t ml
To which I answer:
Just follow the links
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020520/020520-11.h
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
universe is a computer:
yeah but space is so quiet. where are the fans?
Is anyone else freaked out about the popularity of these types of articles lately, especially the new stuff that Wolfram has put out? And what about this guy? (kurzweilai.net) Will the event horizon consume us all?
Your assumption is ultimately flawed; you assume that you have knowledge of what the universe "actually" is. It's no more or less meaningful to call the universe a computer than to call it a piece of rotting fruit.
That having been said, what stupid kind of analogy is this? Does this guy have a day job?
Did you ever hear for the Planck's distance - for example?
Analog - is an oldfashioned myth.
- Thomas
imagine a Beowulf cluster of those! :-P
Drat, they found out. I thought you tested the system to confirm self recognition was not possible!
....
Ok, well get the patch done soon so I can reboot, ok?
As far as i understood this is the computer power needed to run a perfect universe-simulation. But like most programmers do know, it's often possible to get programmes running on lower hardware, without the users noticing it. Think for example of 3D-grafics... those solid looking rocks in games ain't that solid after all, but as long as the clipping is good enough you won't see a difference.
... i'd probably do so anyway for debugging purposes :).
An interesting calculation could be how much computer power would be needed to fool humans? Multiply the number of inputs a brain can handle by the number of humans and you get the amount of data which has to be consistent at any given moment. Generating this data will still need more power than my PC has to offer, but it could be a lot cheaper than simulating a whole universe.
And to save even some more processing time an evil programming genius might even implement a human.ForgetWhatYouNoticed() function which get's triggered each time when a human object seems to be puzzled by inconsistent universe behaviour
...if the universe is one gigantic calculating machine, can you run a Counter-Strike sever one it? If so, what's the maximum number of users you could host?
-Ed
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
...Gates' Law predicts that in 600 years Microsoft will have assimilated the entire Universe in what mosts physicists refer to as the "Big Crash".
Whether this will actually occur, of course depends on the exact values of many still undetermined constants, such as the total mass of CowboyNeal and the exact value of the Cosmological Fudge Factor.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
I've checked over the calculations, and there's no allocation for flightless water fowl...
-Ed
(fondly remembering the comic where the brainy kid forgot to carry the 2, and nearly erased Opus)
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
If you are familiar with Planck - How much "slop" does your computer need to run? - apparently the universe needs a universe full to run, and PC's are not designed for "slop" - exception MicroSoft.
When you think about the Athlon on your desk running GNU/Linux, you could consider it not so much as a "computer" itself but as an tiny interface to a deep computational reality that is the universe. That is, your Athlon only computes because it is a certain special pattern of bits in a larger system which supports computation. So, your Athlon provides a special kind of interface between your mind and that larger computationally reality -- say, like a Series 1 minicomputer was often used to provide full screen editing interfaces to much larger IBM mainframes. An Athlon may be a tiny little keyhole to peak through compared to the size of the universe, but it is perhaps better than nothing. Think of your Athlon as being more like a telescope or microscope than a thing of study itself (not to say an Athlon can't be studied of course). Someday, perhaps we will store information in the very fabric of reality itself, and computations will be perfomed on that information without physical silicon needing to be present. Probably we'll still just mainly use it to embed smiley faces everywhere though. :-) Or edit them if one is so inclined. :)
By the way, I first saw this idea of "the universe is a computer" referenced in the 1988 book by Robert Wright called "Three Scientists and their Gods:Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information" in the part about Edward Fredkin, see for example: http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/reviews.wright.htm l
and:
http://digitalphysics.org/Publications/Fredkin/New -Cosmogony/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You might be suprized that you can store all of the information of the universe (all 10^90 bits worth) on a popsickle(tm) stick.
Here's how you do it: First encode it all in a text string. Then convert the string to it's ASCII numerical equivalents, but keep all the numerical equivalents packed together so it's like a string. Now place a decimal point at the beginning. What you have is a fractional number between one and zero, i.e. a ratio. Carefully measure the popsicle stick and make a mark for your ratio. There, done! All the information of the universe on a popsicle stick.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Scientists have pinpointed the rate of the Universe expansion down to it doubling exactly every 18 earth months. Hubble would be proud!
If the universe is a computer, does that make me an NPC in a game of "Final Fantasy" played by a kid in the Q Continuum?
Quantum Computing.
But then again, with an infinite number of universes to run your calculations in, it doesn't really matter how strong your encryption is, does it?
:-)
The following may be absurd, but (in a manner similar to Carl Sagan's Cosmos series) it may help enlighten us as to how much detail we don't see and don't collect about a particular event.
Instead of the entire universe, let's take a look at a World Cup soccer/football game.
We cannot come close to understanding, though, the amount of data necessary to "record" that event. It is only through selective compression, what our senses tell us, that we develop our view of that event. For some, like Mr. Vieri, he may remember what he felt and experienced during and after that event. A fan in Italy might remember what they saw, and might even have a tape or picture that shows one view of the event. A sports writer in Equador might only remember that Italy beat Ecuador 2-0. The average person on planet Earth will have no knowledge or recollection of the event, and frankly, won't care because life is too short.
Good analysis of events is compression. Our memory is compression of our experiences. With good compression, we won't have to record everything, and therefore avoid the "explosion of data" as best we can. As we collect data, we need to consider its importance to us and discard anything not relevant.
For detail we do care about (eg: data needed to compute Earth's weather), we might try to build large data repositories and build expensive computers to process that data, but most of the Universe's data is best left unknown to us because it's not important to us (yet).
- ez
PS: You gotta hand it to the folks at Google for attempting to collect and store so much data from the Internet.
Jonathan Andrew Barrett, better known as the Goatse.cx man, was found dead in his Rockcliffe home yesterday night by local police. He was truly an icon to visitors of slashdot, and will be missed by all.
The ultimate question is NOT "If the universe is a giant computer, how big is it?"
It's "If the universe is a giant computer, what the hell is it computing?"
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I mean, it's not like there's going to be a bigger calculator in the universe than, well, the universe itself.
--Matthew
Here we go kiddies, on a romp through introductory quantum physics; when we get to the other side of the ride, please exit in an orderly fashion.
Lession 1: Particles do not have an exact position. This is just a lame restatement Heisenberg's Uncertainty Priciple.
Lession 2: The state of a particle is represented as a probability function over all of space. The probability is the likelyhood that we will observe that particle at the location. For every point in space, there is a nonzero value for this function. This means that you could observe a particle anywhere--not just where we expect to see it. We don't ofter see particles jump around because the probability curve is a fairly sharp spike (for particles like electrons), which quickly tapers off to near zero.
Lesson 3: The state of a single particle therefore has an infinite amount of information. Still, most single particle systems can be summed up with less than an infinite amount of information.
Lession 4: A multiple particle system cannot be represented by anything less than the combined probability function for the two particles. Presentely, we have no idea how to represent the state of a two particle system with anything less than an infinite amount of information. We can approximate many two particle systems to any degree we desire, but the inherent inaccuracies will always add up.
My point is that the Universe cannot be represented by less than an infinite amount of information. Even worse, every particle in the Universe requires aleph one (real number) size infinities. So, any attempt to express the amount of information in the Universe as a finite value is fundamentally, inherently, loosingly and bogusly pointless.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
Who says the Universe is binary?!?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
The intersection between information theory and physics is fascinating -- if you've taken classes or done work in theoretical computer science, you've probably encountered this type of stuff already. The ideas expressed in the article may seem far-fetched, but if you start looking at things like Kolmogorov complexity, zero-energy computations, and so on, you start to appreciate the relationship between what information is and the world of physics. It's really wonderful stuff, and you don't have to be an egghead mathematician or physicist to appreciate it.
Would /dev/null be New Jersey, or is that /var?
Lloyd views every process, every change that takes place in the Universe, as a kind of computation.
Ever heard the phrase "unquantifiable fact"? I don't believe the universe is a series of bits.
Ridiculous.
Just because a person happens to enjoy logical thought and working with computers, that's no reason to deny that there is a reality apart from that little binary world.
Revival of cryonics patients may require massive computing power on a scale similar to that contemplated by this article. Oh well, beats dying any day....
This post is protected under the DMTA (Digital Millemium Trolling Act). It is illegal to moderate it as a troll.
In Asimov's Foundation series, he suggests there could be some way of mathematically describing the universe using less complexity than the universe itself contains. That is, a few simple rules could be extrapolated like fractals into the universe as we know it. Such a computer would be significantly smaller.
Jeremy
Once, a race of supreme beings eventually decided to find out the ultimate answer to life the universe, and everything. The results of their research were far from conclusive.
Space (or to give it a more technical name, 'The Universe') is big. Really Big. It's also full of really surprising things like Babel fish and tea.
The history of the universe is terribly long and awfully difficult to understand, even in its simpler moments which are, roughly speaking, the beginning and the end.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
These stupid moderators have no sense of humor, and that's why I read at -1.
10^90 upside down is 10v60.
10^120 upside down is 10v150.
Since "V" is also five, we have:
10560 and 105150.
Add them digit by digit and we have:
1+0+5+6+0 = 12
1+0+5+1+5+0 = 12
Add them again, because matter (how much) can't be separated from spirit (can process) and we have 24. Read backwards because the zen philosofy says it's mind over matter, and the final result is:
42 !!!
In other words, old news...
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It just exists. It doesn't need to compute anything.
Are you serious? Do you have a reference?
This is pretty much what "a new kind of science" is about.
However, i don't think that we will ever be able to simulate the entire universe with a computer, because time is discrete; time, like energy, matter (which can be considered energy) and space, comes in discrete quantities (quanta). this means, that the minimum time it takes to perform any actions is (theoreticly) exacly one quantum of time. Since the universe is already running at this maximum frequency (it is not limited by the frequency, i think it defines the maximum frequency by defining the size of the quanta), we cannot possible make a computer that can (in realtime) calculate anything with more quanta than the computer consists of, and that is assuming that the computer is perfectly efficient, and only needs one quantum to represent a quantum in the simulated system.
We might be able to build a computer that would be able to simulate a system much smaller (less quanta, or particles, if you will) that the computer itself.
However, quantum physics says, that any particle in the universe (and quanta other than matter, too) are affected by every other particle in the universe. Therefor, one cannot run a perfect simulation of a small system, without simulating everything around the system as well (as it's always part of the system, the system is affected by everything around it, no matter how far (in space, time, or other dimension) away.)
This means, that we cannot outperform the universe by paralell computing either.
Another problem would be that you cannot simulate a system perfectly without knowing it's state at a given time with perfect accuracy. But the uncertaincy priciple prohibts this, and and very small inaccuracy in the starting data could yield a significantly different endresult.
I wonder how the quanta of space would be organised. I mean, there is a minimum distance between two points, which are not the same point? But can this be in any direction, or would any point in space have to be aligned on some sort of grid? This would mean that there is a finite number of 'slots' that could hold matter in a give amount of space.
Would the maximum speed of any matter particle be limited to 1 quantum of space per quantum of time? It makes sense, but what would movement look like near this maximum speed?
Since something cannot move half a quantum of space for every quantum of time, it would have to move by one quantum of space for every second quantum of time, and stay at the same place at the time quanta in between. Then again, would it be possible to move one quantum of space for each quantum of time for 5 quanta of time (so, move 5 space quanta), stop for one quantum of time, and the continue for another 5 quanta of time? That doesn't really make sense, it would mean that movement would look very jerky if observed at quantum level (if it would be possible to observe something at that level).
If this sort of movement would not be possible, it would mean that it is possible for a matter quantum to move at the maximum velocity, and at half the maximum velocity, but not at any velocity in between.
The more i think about this, the more i realise that we (read: i) don't really know anything about how the universe works.
Asimov calculated the max computing power of the universe in either 'the sun shines bright' or
'counting the eons'. Of course, I'm not sure if he assumed a newtonian universe to do this, and whether quantum computers could improve on this... of course, dosen't the universe contain a potentially infinite amount of information since space is a continum and not discrete?
IANAP.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
So much for that "universe of infinite possibilities"... Hell, we can calculate it all out! *A star winks out of existance* Oops. Forgot to carry the two. Is this guy really that naive to think he can accurately do something like that? What's his error factor? +/- 3^8 ?? It's almost like... Like... Like predicting a pattern of (dare I say "global") warming using a sliver of history as an example!
..Basically, said admin has reversed it's policy on Global warming. Hey, Kyoto and U-571 mad news here... What's up?
Which leads me to the perfect segway...
2002-06-03 19:25:40 Bush Administration Global Warming Turnabout (articles,news) (rejected) [TOTAL REJECTED TO DATE: 9/9]
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We should all keep in mind this simple truth: the Universe is dying. You don't need to be Kreskin to predict the Universes future. The hand writing is on the wall: the Universe faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the Universe because the Universe is dying. Things are looking very bad for the Universe. As many of us are already aware, the Universe continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Or perhaps you saw Pleasantville:
"Yeah, what's outside of Pleasantville?"
"I don't understand..."
"What's at the end of Main Street?"
"Mary Sue, you should know the answer to that... the end of main street is just the beginning again!"
The real question is: "Is the universe outside the Matrix a big computer too?"
Wouldn't the statement of anything being a "computer" implicitly necessitate the existance of a "creator" or "programmer"?
Of course, I'm being facetious. Science has long acknowledged the concept of "intelligent design". Apparantly, the universe was created by something intelligent, a super-powerful sentient being of sorts. It just wasn't God. Makes me wonder what it was...
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Maybe the Universe is a good enough computer to run Doom III at high resolution! Or to play the latest version of EverQuest...
The details aren't that gory. Say for instance you have a program that's running. Will it halt? The answer is unkown until it halts. If it doesn't halt, that doesn't mean that it will run to completion, it just means that it may not have halted... yet...
The only question is should we GPL it? or should we put it into the public domain. . .
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
If the universe if calculating, it is obviously searching an answer for a certain question. But doesn't it know we already HAVE the answer? It is 42.
It is the question we are trying to find.
The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
When you so confidently dismiss mathematics as "not existing before we formulated it," you not only are being vague about "we", you are also restricting the term mathematics to mean less than most people mean when they say it.
If two mathematicians discover the same theorem independently, what that means is that the common set of axioms they are working with had some consequences that were unknown, but now are known by both mathematicians. Those consequences (that is, the theorem) obviously existed independently of either mathematician, since the other one would have discovered it alone. It therefore seems more sensible to attribute the existence of the theorem to the axioms rather than the mathematicians.
If you accept that theorems belong to axioms, then the number of theorems is potentially unlimited, and certainly greater than now "exist" or ever will exist under your restricted definition. What good is a definition like that?
I study computer science, not physics, but from what I learned in high school, the current theory of the universe is founded on the existence of an uncountable infinity. This would imply that the universe in inherently something more than a computer as computers deal with countably infinite entities at best, if not countably finite entities.
Of course, these things are just shadows in our minds of the greater reality we exist in. Thats why I never really liked science and chose to study a branch of mathematics (computer science).
Computer people are idiots. Sorry, not computer people but slashdot people.
... I can just play Quake!
Cryo-chamber, here I come!
c-hack.com |
IE, the multiverse's random number generator isn't truly random.
:P
Obviously, we *are* living in a computer.
It's not an analogy. It's a perspective. From a certain point of view the universe might look exactly like a computer. If it does then it might as well be a computer because you can treat it exactly like one. This doesn't preclude the possibility that there might be other points of view too.
There is, of course, the possibility that it's not a valid point of view. But that needs more arguing than simply "the universe isn't a computer".
-- SIGFPE
Does anyone else catch this?
Frequently there are estimations and announcements made about the maximum this, or the upper limit of that, which are promptly proved untrue and replaced my other statements soon to be proven untrue.
Example:
I remember Willie Gates making a statement that no computer will EVER need more that 640k of RAM.
There have been many statements released about the top speed that silicon based processors can go, and the maximum number of transistors on a chip, many of which have been disproven.
How many of these statements must be shot down before these so called experts will quit making these statements? Will it ever end?
Ed
(insert attempt to be witty here)
The article proves that the universe is computable given a larger universe with more material, and there is no way we can find out if this is true or not since we are just represented as bits in those calculation. If it is the case, I hope the computer runs for some more years before crashing, or maybe I am already safely stored in a backup.
Isn't it obvious he's a Sith Lord?
Must resist the dark side!!
(This is one I heard; I didn't think it up myself)
If you wrapped a cord around the Earth's equator (assuming a perfectly round, solid Earth), and then wished to lengthen that cord so that it could be suspended one foot above the equator at every point, while still making a full loop around, by how much would you have to lengthen the cord?
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
No way, dude. That was MY hilarious joke.
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I got the century wrong but yes, this was an idea. Here's a history site.
They were so overwhelmed by the idea that you could pump AIR instead of just water (and that it would invisibly kill things in bell jars), that they started wondering what else you could pump--e.g. thoughts. Here's Descartes playing with the idea:
"The cavities of the brain are central reservoirs...animal spirits enter these cavities. They pass into the pores of its substance and from these pores into the nerves. The nerves may be compared to the tubes of a waterworks; breathing or other actions depend on the flow of animal spirits into the nerves. The rational soul (the pineal) takes place of the engineer, living in that part of the reservoir that connects all of the various tubes...."
Hmm, maybe that's what our brains are used for when we sleep at night....
-- Argel
And the Big Bang is what happens when the universe runs out of memory?
-- Argel
... can, of course, be approximated using macro-level formulae. A faster orbit decay is a macro level manifestation of quantum phenomena.
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
I know that in particle physics, you can find several binary relationships, (particle/anti-particle, left spin/right spin, etc.) but in the macroscopic world, things seem just a little bit too analog. Systems like weather, planetary motion, and biological systems seem like they would be hard to reduce to a series of bits, and are best represented by continuous functions. I'm sure such reductions could be done, but it seems philosophically unappealing.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
You'd need about 10^90 bits, with something like 10^120 manipulations of those bits, to express the universe since time began.
Ha! I downloaded a copy of the universe on Kazaa just the other day, and it only took up 2 cds. Sure, the quality wasn't as good, but it was free.
Remember the tooth!
Just wait for the next generation of computers then: they will be able to simulate the whole history of the universe, plus those 600 years, plus another 13 *billion* years more :).
The heck with the manual...I want the cheat codes!
His entire series of calculations are based on the observable universe, not the actual universe. We already know from Inflationary Theory, that the universe went through a rapid expansion phase resulting in a present day size of the universe at least 10^35 ly Radius!!! That being the case, his calculations are under-par by hundreds of orders of magnitude!! My calcularions suggest that the total number of computation the universe has made to be at the very minimum 10^400 operations.
www.enthea.org
Have you ever read Douglas Adams?
Ya wouldn't know it... next you'll come up with the theory that mice run the earth!
It looks like I'm about to be GC'ed.
Resistance is futile.
You will be assimilated.
is impossible to predict because we don't use the same "random numbers" as the "universal computer" when doing OUR "approximation of an approximation". ;)
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
sorry, didn't know if anyone had said it yet ;)
// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
Aaaah, the mechanistic view of our Universe, that big, fat computer... Reminds me of those fools who were claiming, ten years ago, that we were twenty years away from becoming immortal (download of our brain into silicon and all that). Now they say, what, fifty years away. All right, guys, see you in 2052!
Many people have wondered before why the laws of nature are such simple equations. The reason is clear: it's much easier to simulate that way. The simpler and more elegant the laws of physics are, the more likely it becomes that this is not the real universe.
I would set the one that determines whether I can get laid or not from its current 0 to a 1. Please, universe? That's just ~1/10^120 of all the bits, you won't even notice the difference!
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.
Isnt' the universe analog as apposed to digital?
It seems like a digital approximation would be a infinitely large abstraction.
If so then it's infinitely precise in all it's measurable parts. Maybe that infinite precision won't all have noticable (whatever that means) effect in the present but what about the future? How many significan't digits - or how real - would you want it to be? How do you arrive at that magic number?
The basic idea is that energy and entropy are related to the fundamental limits of computation, so if you know the energy and entropy density of the universe, and the size of the observable bit, you can figure out the relevant number of bits and computations...
Energy: time to change the picture.
Actually, that's not entirely true. You have to account for matter that, due to expansion, exceeds and the pull of gravity necessary to "close" the universe. Eventually it exceeds light relative to the opposite side of the universe, red shifting until no information from that matter can reach the opposite side. In effect, it ceases to exist, and since gravity cannot exceed the speed of light, the gravitational effect of the matter on one side of the universe is not felt by the matter on the opposite side.
Deep, huh?
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
The Universal AC was not the Universe - it was separate and existed only in Hyperspace. The universe existed before the Universal AC, so the Universal AC could not be the universe. What the universal AC did do, however, was mimic God, or perhaps it was the other way around.
Games Workshop Petition
But since gravity's effect only propagates at the speed of light (very slow in the timescales discussed) the implementation is so much simpler, you don't have to update the entire map, only the cells/nodes nearest to you, which will pass on the information on the next cycle to their neighbors, etc.
If I arrange the rocks in my backyard into finite states then I could also:
- guess how many bits it represents
- claim it to be a computer simulating itself
- call up the press
and it's still a bunch of rocks.
Maybe if I get a degree someone would publish it too.
http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.
At least from the evidence of the above link provided, gravity does not appear to be limited as you might think. It's effect doesn't even appear to be limited to the speed of light according to many observations! Rather, it may be more of an inherant pull of space-time, a structural effect, if you will. Of course, there are also unknowns such as the accellerating expansion of the universe which help confuse understanding even further.
Anyway, these are just simple observations from someone who is not a physicist, but is instead a college programmer who tries to understand the universe as far as simulation of forces is concerned. It still appears that there are essential types of forces out there, whether basic or not, that we still can't recreate with known observations. The effects of gravity in all it's incarnations still fits that category.
I'd definetly be interested in counter-arguments though!
:^)
Ryan Fenton
The quick reference to the Matrix is interesting. If you think about it, we ARE in the matrix. Instead of being controlled by macines on earth, we're being controlled by the laws of the universe with our senses being what plugs us in to this giant computer. Scientists and engineers are the Neos of the universe as we figure out how to bend and mold it to do our bidding.
Oh my god, I almost sound like Katz...I better stop while I am not too far behind.
However, using particle-wave duality, since a wave exists at EVERY (mathematic) point and the rationals are infinite, then the particle consumes(produces) an infinite amount of data. And we haven't even mentioned photons which do that even as "classical" 'particles'.
It may be interesting join this approach to the one exposed by Wolfram in his new 1200-page book "A new kind of science", which states that all the systems in the universe are the result of computations based on simple rules (Cellular Automata as a computation model) and that a "computational equivalence rule" exists, so that all these systems (eventually contained one into other, ending up in the whole universe) are the result of "equivalent" computational models. :) and, if you have (a lot of) spare time, think about it.
Check this article on wired, or the whole book
cheers.
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
Slightly OT, but the other thread about us being able to simulate the universe in 600 yrs if Moore's law doesn't have some theoretical limit... so your post is a good starting point to oppose the theory just a bit... (don't take me too seriously)
Difficulties should appear if humans could ever create a computer with the purpose of simulating the whole universe: It's like making a P3 processor emulate a P4 and get away with the "speed gains:" How could a computer simulate the universe in real time, since it would strain the speed of the universe to "power" that computer anyway... However, if time itself slowed down in the simulation, our brains would never notice the difference because they're tied to time as well.
"Wireless : LAN
Wouldn't it help if it's tarzipped it first?? /' on that system... (if only I wasn't tarzipped by then...))
A folder for every solar system, for every galaxy, and maybe for every universe??
(I would like to say 'ls
Lets hope that whatever the universe is computing comes out to something more intelligent than just 42....
The universe is one big computer, for running the ultimate porn viewer!!
I loved greg bear's idea that quarks have associated "bits" that determine their location in the universe, and that these can be tweaked to position matter elswhere instantly.
No shit.
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When you think about it, you realize that what the Judeo-Christians have done with "God" is similar to what Microsoft did with "Office", "Word", and "Windows" - appropriate a common word to further their own ends.
As for the capitalization of "Him", admit it, "respect" is just a euphemism for "fear". Anyone who believes in a god of love as opposed to a god of vengeance and pettiness would not feel the need to capitalize parts of speech that refer to their god, because she would know what they mean and how they mean it.
Then one might expect some brilliant alien mathemetition to perform computations with compressed data without uncompressing it. The only such situations I can think of off hand are special cases where the math just happens to simplify. Also known as "flukes."
I don't know if anyone's done a study on the limits of compression with a certain number of hard bits, but it seems to me that the data the Universe contains could actually be somewhere close to practical Infinity.
What's this Submit thingy do?
With the universe being a computer, there are 2 ways to look at this.
1) God is an object-oriented programmer.
2) The universe (computer) programmed itself.
I prefer #1, upper management believes #2.
Enjoy your life, it's the only one you've got!
A Turing machine is any machine that can perfectly emulate any other Turing machine.
Well, at this very moment I'm using the universe to emulate a Pentium II. And my mom is downstairs, emulating a G3.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
bc(1) is SOOO much fun!
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
why the universe shoule be a gigantic computer or computer program? how can you digitalize art? how about your feelings?
"We" in my post means any "we" you can think of - I'm letting that be as broad as possible intentionally. I also don't think this matters, as my statements apply at any scope of "we".
I am following a very strict definition of mathematics, but it is not a restricted definition. It is a definition based on the formal identity of mathematics, which is really indisputable... and that does mean "less" that most people intend it to. The point of my post was that most people are wrong to assume a necessary correspondence between mathematics and reality.
Mathematics is a logical system. It is entirely self-referential. Its validates assertions by verifying the internal consistency of the system. While in reference to itself mathematics may provide truth with absolute clarity, it does not provide Truth beyond its own bounds. It's simply can't. This is a tautology.
The point is that logical systems in general do not necessarily have any relation to the actuality of existence. They can be extremely useful tools because they allow us to draw conclusions from models which may be infinitely refined. On the other hand, these conclusions are never necessarily "correct". They might be, but they might not be.
I get very frustrated with our tendency to think that our symbolic representations are the Cause and the State Of Things is the effect. Even if that is the case, we have no way to verify it. When I say that the existence of mathematics as we know it is limited to our formulation, I'm right: mathematics is a closed system which can be very large (to put it mildly), but it is at best a description of reality, not reality itself.
If you can argue me down, I'm all for it because I'll have to gain quite a bit along the way. As it is, I'm pretty sure my assessment is a valid one. It limits itself in a cute post-modern way, but I think that also serves as a sort of recursive validation.
[|]
Gravity isn't well understood. One theory is that it is "implemented" using a carrier particle (like the electro-weak force), say the graviton. These would be descrete particles that spew out of all massive objects and carry the gravitational force to other objects. Obviously there would be lots of these to simulate, though!
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
I have a very hard time believing that some physicists still treat elementary particles as being finite in nature. What happened to string theory? I doubt that there is a finite set of states for a string to be in. And are extra dimensions taken into account? We tend to think on, at most, 4 dimensions. The number of actual dimensions has yet to be determined. What are the states of these "elementary particles" in the 5th dimension? Sixth? Thirteenth? How does one particles state affect another? Can this be considered in the computation count? The premise here is nice but it's a bit too focused and unimaginative. It would be a nice exercise to gather some of the greatest minds on the planet and play this little party game but I doubt that we will ever be able to calculate the computational abilities of the entire universe. Well, not until we understand the universe as whole anyways. Ash Just my opinions, yada yada yada....
Hera: What is it, honey? It's 3 AM.
Zeus: (looking at a computer monitor) My newest program. I call it.. "The Universe."
Hera: Go back to sleep.
Zeus: It's running under Microsoft Windo- Ah, dammit.
Si metrum non habet, non est poema.
The thing about the universe is the quality of the porn it turns out: sex so real it's real! Ok, it's a little hard to find for some; but for them there's even simulations of the grand simulation. (Humm, Plato's ideals as recursive functions.)
Okay, as a Christian, God is rather non-Judeic, in that their name for God is Jahweh, and they give Him a specific name for a reason.
And yes, we do FEAR Him. And you should too. Or you would know that if you had studied the book.
:) Have A Nice Day
2^3 * 31 * 647