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."

Comments

Re:Change = Calculation?

[geojaz]

And also, why does everything have to be made into a computer of some sort? DNA, and now the whole universe?

Simply, humans are simple and by comparing phenomena to computers or whatever it makes it a little easier for us to comprehend. Look at Wolfram's "new" book.
The real question is at what point does the model become the real thing...

...aw, this is old stuff

[dougie404]

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.

Re:So what is the question?

[MindStalker]

no!!, its whats 6 times 9. Which actually gives 54, but gives 42 is base 13. Though Douglas Adams swears the base thing was a pure accident.

Preprint available online

[SiliconEntity]

A preprint is available online from the quantum physics archive. PS and PDF formats.

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.

Re:...BUT...

[JordanH]

Try Zeno's Paradoxes in a search engine.

The solution is that the arrow can pass through an infinite number of points in a finite amount of time.

In other words, the sum of

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... + 1/2**n (as n -> infinity) = 1

Re:Change = Calculation?

[undecidable]

The thing is, mathematically you can solve a halting problem. In other words, you can prove mathematically whether any specific program will end or not. If a person (a brain) can solve this, why can't any sufficiently advanced computer do the same?

I'm afraid I don't have a good example handy, but there are examples of very simple programs that no one has yet been able to prove if they halt or not. The ones I have seen have the form something like:

int f(int x)
{
if( x == 1 )
return 1;
else if( x has some property )
return f( g(x) );
else
return f( h(x) );
}

where g and h might be something like:

int g(int x)
{
return x / 2;
}

int h(int x)
{
return 3*x + 1;
}

Of course you rearrange this so that it's not recursive. The point is that even smart people can't solve these problems with or without the use of computers.

Don't underestimate the power of a Turning Machine. Is there a problem that a Human can solve that a Turning Machine cannot? My guess is no.

Re:Clock rate 1x10-63second ... Plankt time.

[Kynde]

One has to wonder who decided to mod that up. If the modee doesnt understand the post or even have a fucking clue about the stuff why mod it then... (you wont see me moderating business, economics or litigational stuff either)

Because that post is total crap. It's Planck and it's 10^-43 and Mandlebrot set is the converging set for a recursive complex equation (namely z z^2+c). Not that x=1/xi couldnt produce some fractal, but I'm not going to bother myself checking which that is because even this post is redundant, I'm posting this merely for the metamoderators.

Not to mention "guided by", "with chaotic consequences"...

Re:air pumps in 1700s actually 1600s

[texchanchan]

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...."

Re:Data compression

[dustman]

And depending on the formulas I used, this could confuse the simulated scientists in my universe, who would be wondering how electrons could pass through two slits simultaneously, but only when they weren't looking. Wait a minute...

Electrons don't pass through two slits simultaneously. Each electron goes through only 1 slit. The probability of each electron going through slit A vs slit B is described by the "wave equation"...

IE, for some physical configuration, it has a 20% chance of A and an 80% chance of B... But "all" of the particle passes through whichever slit is "chosen".