Theory of Information Could Resolve One of the Great Paradoxes of Cosmology

KentuckyFC writes: When physicists attempt to calculate the energy density of the universe from first principles, the number they come up using quantum mechanics is 10^94 g/cm^3 . And yet the observed energy density is about 10^-27 g/cm^3. In other words, our best theory of reality misses the mark by 120 orders of magnitude. Now one researcher says the paradox can be resolved by considering the information content of the universe. Specifying the location of the 10^25 stars in the visible universe to an accuracy of 10 cubic kilometers requires some 10^93 bits. And using Landauer's principle to calculate the energy associated with all these bits gives an energy density of about 10^-30 g/cm^3. That's not a bad first principles result. But if the location has to be specified to the Planck length, then the energy density is about 117 orders of magnitude larger. In other words, the nature of information should lie at the heart of our best theory of reality, not quantum mechanics.

Comments

Numerology

[PvtVoid]

Why, for instance, 10 cubic-kilometer voxels? Why not 100, or 1, or 0.1? How about 10^{15} cubic kilometers, which is about the volume of the sun? Adjust this number correctly, and you can match any energy density you want.

This is the problem with the science blogosphere: they'll take any press release whatsoever and echo it around regardless of whether or not it makes any fucking sense at all.

Re: Numerology

[funky_vibes]

The idea does actually work if the assumption is that we are living in a simulation, similar to ours. ;)

Re: Numerology

[Wycliffe]

The idea does actually work if the assumption is that we are living in a simulation, similar to ours. ;)

That's actually what I thought too. I've actually pondered this before. If we are in a simulation then stuff at the microscopic
or macroscopic only has to exist when viewed and can be generalized to a much lower resolution the rest of the time which
would greatly reduce the processing power required. This might also help explain some of the observation effects of quantum
physics where it seems that things act differently when observed.

Re:Numerology

[Charliemopps]

Why, for instance, 10 cubic-kilometer voxels? Why not 100, or 1, or 0.1? How about 10^{15} cubic kilometers, which is about the volume of the sun? Adjust this number correctly, and you can match any energy density you want.

This is the problem with the science blogosphere: they'll take any press release whatsoever and echo it around regardless of whether or not it makes any fucking sense at all.

No, they are basing it on Plank Length: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
A unit of measure derived specifically from universal constants, the speed of light, the Planck constant, and the gravitational constant.

So it's not some arbitrary unit of measure as you suggest. It's the universes unit of measure. (assuming our current model of the universe holds) It's the smallest unit of measure that has any meaning in the real world.

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

Having to apply an arbitrary fudge factor to a calculation just screams BS.

Also, who says that the universe, at some point, isn't analog, or at least multi-state instead of binary.

Crap "science" based on a series of crap assumptions. Using the same technique (using arbitrary values and assumptions) we can "prove" that the dark matter is magic jelly beans.

Re:Numerology

[by (1706743)]

No, I think this information theory "approach" uses 10km^3 voxels:

Specifying the location of the 10^25 stars in the visible universe to an accuracy of 10 cubic kilometers...gives an energy density of about 10^-30 g/cm^3. ...But if the location has to be specified to the Planck length, then the energy density is about 117 orders of magnitude larger.

So they roughly recover the quantum mechanical (apparently incorrect) result if they use Planck length^3 voxels.

Not that I read the article of course, but this seems an odd thing to do, as you should probably be confining them to hbar units of phase-space, not just confining them to voxels.

Re:Numerology

[khallow]

No, they're basing it on an arbitrary volume unit that was made to be 10^120 larger than Planck length cubed. It still doesn't make any sense in that regard.

Another approach is to suppose that relative to a single point of space we try to nail down the position of everything we can see to as accurately as we can. We're going to have more trouble nailing down the position of distant locations because it's harder to build out a sensory network to triangulate positions or launch retroreflectors to everything we can see. That sort of thing.

Re:Numerology

[burtosis]

Not sure if you are describing it correctly. They are not basing it on the plank length. They show that if you do the energy density of the universe is off by 117 orders of magnitude, close to the 120 orders off if you calculate the energy density of dark energy from first principles. The 10^4 km isn't totally at random, it's based on the free energy associated with encoding a center of mass classically in such a way as to make it unambiguous to independent observers.

IANAP but it still smacks of numerology because the paper does not make any basis for why the mass of stars is important in any way. There is plenty of ordinary matter not in stars, black holes etc. what would have caught my attention is if it made a case based on mass and not just stars. Or at least gave a relevant basis for why it is negligible to discard non-star matter.

tl:dr numerology. Though props to the author for saying it can be easily dismissed as numerology in his own paper - that's good scientific method.

Re: Numerology

[LordLimecat]

Fun fact: Everything you know is predicated on some set of assumptions.

Re: Numerology

[funky_vibes]

The first time we stumbled upon pi or any one of the constants, they were also just arbitrary numbers.

But sure, it's way too premature to be making any sort of publications about analysis like this.
If this value starts popping up when doing various unrelated research, it may warrant a closer look.

Re:Numerology

[rpresser]

It makes a tiny bit of sense to me.

"If we use [unstated first principles] to estimate what energy density should be, it's about 10^94 g/cm^3.
If we use the information content at the Planck scale, it's pretty close -- about 10^90 g/cm^3.

But we actually observe an information density of about 10^-27 g/cm^3.
And if we decrease the resolution from Planck scale voxels to 10 km^3 voxels, we get an information density that equates to 10^-27 g/cm^3.

This is evidence that we are living in a simulation, and the programmers aren't running the universe at Planck scale voxels, but only star sized voxels."

A large mountain of salt needs to be taken with this argument, but it does make sense -- as an argument.

Re: Numerology

[Oligonicella]

A completely bogus concept can be very accurately modeled with math. Reality doesn't care.

Re: Numerology

[burtosis]

If you replace simulation with indeterminacy due to the multiple worlds interpretation of quantium mechanics it also dosent require much information from weakly interacting events. I always thought collapse was such a ill defined, mathematically clunky and non-symmetrical contrivance it had to be bs. It makes much more sense, at least to me, that you never really collapse the wave function; only the local appearance of it when you arrive at a definate outcome and that a vast multitude of states, just as real, exist with the slight appearance of randomness left over after these states bifurcate.

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

Fun fact: Everything you know is predicated on some set of assumptions.

You're just assuming that's true :-)

Re:Numerology

[michelcolman]

Not that I read the article of course, but this seems an odd thing to do

Most slashdotters seem to agree with you, for pretty much any article :-)

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

Pi is easily proven to be valid by observation and measurement. It wasn't invented, it's a description of what people had already observed.

Same with the speed of light in a vacuum.

This number has no physical manifestation - it's an unfalsifiable claim. There is absolutely no evidence, nor any way of testing, this "theory." We could just as well say that the dark matter is all magic pixie dust - magic because it can't be detected even though it has mass (an undetectable mass? can't happen).

Re: Numerology

[burtosis]

Not all interpretations are equal. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki... The objections raised on the wiki article are generally true, please show me how you can define collapse mathematically and explicitly. Invoking philosophical "common sense" arguements about classical objects dosent count.

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

Problem is, the universe isn't a conventional computer, and there's nobody outside the system observing it. In other words, no real information. The positions of things could be in any random placement and the "calculations" would be wildly different - but that doesn't "create information" any more than any other random number does.

Re:Numerology

[by (1706743)]

Good point. I think, though, that they approached it completely backwards: they have presented a method for determining the information-theory voxel size of the universe (or whatever you like to call it), NOT the energy density, as TFS claims. That is, I think they should have started with the correct answer (10^-27 g/cm^3) and derived the voxel size from there. Then we could debate on the physical meaning of this voxel, which is a legitimate thing to talk about.

Re: Numerology

[camperdave]

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: Numerology

[camperdave]

A completely bogus concept can be very accurately modeled with math. Reality doesn't care.

Ah! But according to Landauer's principle, reality *DOES* care.

Re: Numerology

[camperdave]

Pi isn't a constant. It is half a constant.

Re:Numerology

[neoritter]

Is it just me, or does all this math wrangling seem like what Geocentric scientists were doing to properly figure out the path of stars in our night sky to align with their theory?

Re: Numerology

[everythingistaken]

Everything you know is predicated by some set of *axioms*; not assumptions. For example: euclidian vs. non-euclidian geometry. Do you accept axiom 5 as part of your axioms? A || B || C => A || C Good science will investigate it's own axioms.

Re: Numerology

[UnknownSoldier]

That's complete nonsense. Either a constant is;

- static --> constant or
- dynamic --> variable

A constant divided by another constant is _still_ a _single_ constant.

Vi is simply trolling people.

Re: Numerology

[hackwrench]

I've yet to see described the experiment that determines velocity without observing two positions of an object and then doing calculations. That is, I haven't seen described the experiment that observes velocity directly. I only hear of the uncertainty principle with regards to knowing both at the same time and something about Heisenberg having a mathematical proof and nothing about how velocity can be observed and not merely calculated from observing two timed positions. Well of course you can't know the velocity at the same time as the position if the only means of determining the velocity is through calculation.

Re:Numerology

[UnknownSoldier]

> It's the smallest unit of measure that has any meaning in the real world.

That's actually an open question in Science.

We _assume_ that because we can't _actually_ measure anything smaller then the Planck meter (at this time with our current technology.)

Re: Numerology

[burtosis]

If you mean a single measurement of velocity there are numerous examples. One being a radar gun. You send out a known frequency of photons, they are reflected by the object being measured, and the difference in frequency is measured. The velocity stretches or compresses the reflection. This could be done with a single photon.

Re:Numerology

[lgw]

Why, for instance, 10 cubic-kilometer voxels? Why not 100, or 1, or 0.1? How about 10^{15} cubic kilometers, which is about the volume of the sun? Adjust this number correctly, and you can match any energy density you want.

Fundamentally, you can't model the universe as voxels in the first place. The Holographic principle, or at least the part about maximum information density, seems quite solid. There's a maximum entropy available in a volume (and thus a maximum amount of information needed to describe that volume) that's proportional to surface area, not volume. The number is absurdly high, well over 10^100 per square meter, but for extremely large volumes the cube/square effect starts making that limit meaningful. And that limit always prevents you from using voxels of the "natural" size of one cubic Planck length - the precision we know can model everything.

Perhaps the 10 cubic-kilometer voxels are reasoned from the limit for the visible universe? Still sounds high, even for that volume, and the visible universe seems like an arbitrary boundary.

Re: Numerology

[Natural Philosopher]

"All arguments about interpretations of quantum mechanics are philosophical in nature. None of them change the actual calculations done to make quantitative predictions. They can help give you ideas for what to try next..." Well, (1) What about the Bell inequality? That's an old-school quantitative prediction, as far as I know. (2) Philosophical / interpretive arguments don't just "give ideas for what to try next". They can foster rational intelligibility of Nature, which does not seem like a minor bonus to me.

Re: Numerology

[PvtVoid]

A collapse is the same as taking a single statistically random sample from a probability distribution given by the wave function.

This is wrong: the complex amplitude collapses, not just the probability (which is the square of the amplitude, and contains less information). This distinction is the heart of what makes quantum mechanics intrinsically different from classical physics.

Re: Numerology

[ultranova]

Problem is, the universe isn't a conventional computer, and there's nobody outside the system observing it. In other words, no real information. The positions of things could be in any random placement and the "calculations" would be wildly different - but that doesn't "create information" any more than any other random number does.

By the same logic observed energy density is not "real" either. We who live inside the universe are those observing both star positions (actually how definite their position is) and energy density, so they're both equally real or unreal. All the calculations show is that they are correlated for any particular observer, whether they be inside or outside the system.

Re:Numerology

[PvtVoid]

:-) -- My caricature of Muhammad. Please don't kill me.

How about this?

oO:-|>>

Is that enough to be blasphemy?

Re: Numerology

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that "math" itself is a human construct and has no connection to reality. We developed math purely from an observational perspective (Hey I have two apples. If I get two more, I have four.) of patterns we noticed, and expanded it from there using rules that we made up. Math itself is mostly self-consistent, but that's because we built it that way. There is no reason or evidence to suggest that the universe operates in any way that correlates directly to our mathematics, or even that our mathematical language is sufficient to describe the universe's behavior even if it did.

Re:Numerology

[burtosis]

The visible universe is slightly smaller than the hypothetical light cone originating at the time of the big bang. The last neutrino scattering surface is closer to this hypothetical size. The hypothetical light cone is what defines the surface area of the universe, inflationary models, relativity, etc all show how the shape and size of the visible universe is observer dependent.

that said the 10km cubes come from the free energy associated with representing a classical definate spatial location of all the stars with respect to independent observers. The number of states does scale with temperature but no case is given for discarding other normal warm matter in the universe - making the framework sloppy at best in my opinion.

Re: Numerology

[camperdave]

A constant is significantly interesting in some way. Fractions or multiples of a constant (which, granted, are just as invariable as the constant itself) are not interesting in and of themselves, but only in relation to the base constant from which they are derived. Pi is only interesting because it is half of tau.

A circle is the set of points in a plane equidistant from a fixed point. That distance is called the radius. The perimeter of the circle is the circumference. The circle constant should be the ratio between these two. Using the diameter is one of the biggest blunders in the history of mathematics. You have to have extra definitions. You get the superfluous 2 floating around in all equations. It's sloppy.

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

10-kilometer cubes as the minimum allow all sorts of stuff to co-exist in the same "place." And yet we can differentiate between objects less than 10km apart in everyday life.

Re: Numerology

[hackwrench]

That's even worse. The beginning of the photon's wave is observed then the end, then the operation is done again for a total of four observations.

Re: Numerology

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, all of math and science is a human construct, a way to describe reality. There is no "except" involved, that doesn't contradict what the previous post said. All of physics is currently based on math now, and capable of performing quantitative predictions for comparison against quantitative measurements. If it turns out math cannot describe the universe, because it doesn't behave in some consistent way, that will also be demonstrated by math making predictions that are wrong, and no one coming up with math that gets it right.

In the meantime, people throwing out ideas without doing the math on the internet are still falling way short of contributing anything useful. They're not making any comparisons against observation in any detailed sense. There is a weird double standard, where people will chide physicists for not basing ideas on reality (when often they didn't even bother to read the article or look at what the idea was based on), while complaining no one takes their ideas seriously which are much more baseless, not even taking the time to consider implications and contradictions to observations what would be covered in a textbook or wikipedia level article.

Plenty of new ideas in physics very well will end up to be wrong, but often people trying to sound smart online will dismiss things for really stupid reasons. Math is at least very easy way to cut through a lot of BS (e.g. just look at how much equivocation goes on in some of the discussion in this story, people using vague definition of words for things that have precise mathematical definitions).

Re: Numerology

[ClickOnThis]

There is no reason or evidence to suggest that the universe operates in any way that correlates directly to our mathematics

I agree that there is no reason. But there is plenty of evidence.

Re: Numerology

[UnknownSoldier]

If you don't like the extra 2, then use Tau. It is not like you don't have a choice.

> Using the diameter is one of the biggest blunders in the history of mathematics.

/sarcasm truely First World Problems.

Equations are statements of facts. Projecting your _opinion_ and _emotions_ onto them doesn't change the truth about them.

First, you argue that the superfluous 2 ...

C = 2 * Pi * r

... is sloppy. Now you arguing it is a blunder to use the simpler ...

      C = Pi * D

So which is it? Sloppy? Simplicity? Blunder?

What's next? Are you going to complain about the definition of diameter being sloppy too??

      D=2*r

/sarcasm Oh noes! We can't ignore the OCD of some imagined symmetry in equations! What will we ever do?!?!

Gee, if only there we had a another symbol to represent 2 Pi ...

Re: Numerology

[khallow]

Like e^(i*pi) = -1? I don't see the 2 in that one.

Re: Numerology

[UnknownSoldier]

Nice!

Re: Numerology

[Natural Philosopher]

Nope. It an experimental measurement that DOES depend on the interpretation chosen. If (otherwise QM-compatible) local realistic theories (a.k.a. local hidden-variables) are true, abs(delta)=2. If standard QM (without hidden variables) is true, delta=2*sqr(2), and the Bell inequality is violated (as was shown to be the case). What differs, in a nutshell, is the ontology pressuposed by the theory in each interpretation -- once a component associated with "strictly philosophical" discussions, nowadays proved to have measurable experimental consequences. Thus the term "experimental metaphysics" coined by philosophers of physics Abner Shimony and Michael Redhead. The outermost formalism is in both cases the same, but it is a narrow view to think that formalism is all there is to theory. It is but an element of it. Theories include, in a substantive way, e.g. ontological commitments and methodological assumptions as well (to speak nothing of values, etc).

Re: Numerology

[Xyrus]

The idea does actually work if the assumption is that we are living in a simulation, similar to ours. ;)

That's actually what I thought too. I've actually pondered this before. If we are in a simulation then stuff at the microscopic
or macroscopic only has to exist when viewed and can be generalized to a much lower resolution the rest of the time which
would greatly reduce the processing power required. This might also help explain some of the observation effects of quantum
physics where it seems that things act differently when observed.

No, you can't generalize to a low resolution case most of the time because the resulting computed "frames" would begin to deviate immediately from any form of calculation you try to apply. Chaos and all that.

Re: Numerology

[Wycliffe]

Possibly, but if we're in a "game of life" type situation where the universe pauses, all the positions
are updated, and then the next cycle begins, we would never be able to observe it as it just means
that a "cycle" takes longer. This "cycle" could take 1 minute or 100 years but being inside the
simulation we have no way of observing actual time and therefore have no idea how long it takes
to go from moment to moment.

Re: Numerology

[david_thornley]

Depends on what's simplified. I could imagine stars that were represented by a collection of variables, such that the difference can't be perceived by any current instrument. As the instruments improve, more detail is used on local stars. Back in Greek times, stars were simple, having position, proper motion, spectrum, and magnitude (which could be fixed or varying). When people got instruments that could tell more about stars, the simulators plugged in more detail, keeping it completely compatible with the earlier parameters to within our ability to measure. It may become a different universe than if all the stars had had more variables in Greek times, but how could we tell?

Re: Numerology

[david_thornley]

Ah, you're not an old FORTRAN programmer. Often, small integers would be stored in memory locations (I don't know exactly why). If you passed a constant to a subroutine that passed it to another subroutine that changed it, you could change 4 so it was now 5. If you assigned the constant to a variable in the first place, the variable would be changed by the third subroutine, but that wouldn't change the underlying number. Hence, constants were dynamic.

Re: Numerology

[ConceptJunkie]

You can actually do the same thing in Python.

Re: Numerology

[PvtVoid]

To be clear, I (parent AC) wasn't saying that the probability distribution is the wave function, just that it is given by it (which you confirm, it is the square of the amplitude). Now consider you make an observation and collapse the system to a single state. This state had a certain probability of occurring (again, given by the wave function). If you try to measure again, you will get the same state.

Only if you don't observe any orthogonal characteristics in the meantime. Consider a two-state system, with eigenstates |a> and |b> (for example, z-spin). Now consider an orthogonal basis |1> and |2> (for example, x-spin) which spans the same Hilbert space, such that

|1> = 1/\srqrt{2} |a> + 1/\sqrt{2} |b>
|2> = 1/\sqrt{2} |a> - 1/\sqrt{2} |b>

Now, suppose we observe the system to be in state |a>. Then if we perform an observation in the orthogonal basis, we will have a 50% probability to be in state |1> and 50% in state |2>. Suppose it's in state |2>. Now if we observe the first basis again, it's not in state |a> with certainty any more, despite the fact that we just measured it. It has a 50% chance to be in |a> and 50% to be in |b>.

There is no necessity to "restore coherence": the system is fully coherent throughout. This behavior does not happen with coins.

Re: Numerology

[UnknownSoldier]

Sorry, I don't use old broken languages that pass everything reference, whether you want it or not.

Re: Numerology

[camperdave]

c/r is simpler than c/2r. It was a blunder to choose c/2r as the circle constant.

Re: Numerology

[LordLimecat]

What about the trustworthiness of your own senses? What about the idea that our universe is an inherently logical and rule-following one?

You cannot "prove" those. You cannot even prove that everything out of your perceptive range continues to exist for the time that you cannot perceive it. Heck, one cant even really prove that their entire experience is not a simulation or dream.

These are all assumptions, not axioms; they cannot be proven, and must be accepted.

But more than that, I would wager that you would call racism or cowardice or sexism or unprovoked violence "wrong" in some sense. This, too, is predicated on an unproveable assumption that there is some higher set of values to which we should all abide (even if you were to say "its merely rational to do what is in society's interest", that assumes that "benefiting society" is itself a value; you cannot escape the problem that way).

Re:Numerology

[ZeroWaiteState]

I also think it's funny that being off only 3 orders of magnitude is considered a "pretty good" model. It was like our "pretty good" model of light propagation pre-Einstein; the math just didn't work out.

Re: Numerology

[uninformedLuddite]

so we can be pretty sure that EA didn't develop the universe.

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

You cannot even prove that everything out of your perceptive range continues to exist for the time that you cannot perceive it.

So that crazy old guy who came up behind me and whacked me on the head with a rake (I was picking up my dog poop on public property, but he hates dogs) didn't exist until the rake hit me? And after the cops took him away he went back to fairytale land?

This is proof that objects don't have to be perceived by you to be real. Any argument that tries to work around that requires so many absurd assumptions that it's just not worth it.

Re: Numerology

[BarbaraHudson]

Of course, that ignores the fact that, even if I am a simulation, "I think, therefore I am" is still true - same as it will be if we ever get to the point of uploading ourselves. "I" is not just the physical me. Same as "I" am more than the sum of my genes.

Re: Numerology

[blue trane]

Landauer's principle rests on the Second Law, which itself rests on Kelvin's ego. The same ego that proclaimed heavier than air machine flight to be impossible. In other words, the second law is a conclusion without proof.

Re:Numerology

[cwsumner]

Is it just me, or does all this math wrangling seem like what Geocentric scientists were doing to properly figure out the path of stars in our night sky to align with their theory?

Epicycles? Yes, it does sound like that...

By the way, it is actually a valid way to model irregular repeating functions. Only now we call it a Fourier Series! 8-)

So the Universe is Shrinking?

[retroworks]

And is false information "anti-matter"? Could be we will witness the end of the universe in a flame war on /.

Need to consider this

[Bruha]

What if the universe is 120 times larger? Maybe our part of the observable universe just looks like it happened from a Big Bang.

Re:Need to consider this

[Charliemopps]

What if the universe is 120 times larger? Maybe our part of the observable universe just looks like it happened from a Big Bang.

Well, actually, the universe is infinite in all directions according most. They're basing their math here on a given volume, "The observable universe" which, makes sense given how relativity works. You know, it's the whole cat paradox. If you cannot observe it, it does not exist, etc...

Re:Need to consider this

[burtosis]

Actually the visible universe is only 1,000 th or so of the minimum size of the actual universe as predicted by inflation measurements. Each second we can see another 186 thousand miles, revealing new 'observable universe'. It's predicted that the actual size of the universe may in fact be infinite, as nearly all plausible inflationary models predict infinite size.

Re:Need to consider this

[burtosis]

I doubt you work in a physics department as a contributing member. The reason is that all measurements done, such as with the feature size in the cmb, imply a extremely large to infinite size. Honestly it bothers me, to the point of claiming the offender is misinformed or intellectually dishonest, when we can see another 186 thousand miles each second past the previous limit of "the observable universe" bubble.

Re:Need to consider this

[burtosis]

If all you object to is infinite then that is perfectly acceptable. You lost me at we have nothing outside the "bubble" as that is subjective to the point your own two eyes see a different bubble and is therefore pretty disingenuous to say we have nothing outside it. It's pretty damn obvious from CMB measurements and the lack of any repeating large scale patterns the actual universe is substantially larger than the visible.

Re:Need to consider this

[pscottdv]

It's not 120 times. It's 120 orders of magnitude or 1,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

(the spaces are to get past the lameness filter)

Re:Need to consider this

[Xyrus]

What if the universe is 120 times larger? Maybe our part of the observable universe just looks like it happened from a Big Bang.

For all we know our universe is just the latest in a string of "detonations" due to a locus of instability in the omniverse, Think of it like ripples in water caused by a drop falling into it. Each drop (the "bang") creates a universe and the resulting "wave" pushes the preceding bangs outward, causing expansion. Simultaneously all other bangs are hidden by the peaks of the wave since they all reside in the troughs.

The waves in this case would represent a multi-dimensional "buckling" as result of the explosions, creating what amounts to an infinite potential well between each one. From down in the "troughs", you can't see anything beyond your bounded but infinite space. And that space would appear to be expanding due to the unseen force of new bangs pushing yours outwards.

Now if there's some sort of aether/friction/resistance/etc. in this omniverse then it may be possible, after a long enough period of time, for the amplitude of the waves to diminish allowing observation, or even "crashing" into previous bangs.

Basically you can come up with just about any crazy idea you want once you start pushing the boundaries of the observable universe. However, coming up with something that can be validated scientifically is another matter.

First principles?

[by (1706743)]

If you're starting with the location of stars, that's hardly a first principles calculation...?

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[DoofusOfDeath]

It was broken for me for a minute or two.

Also, once in a while I've been getting SSL certificate errors regarding ./ from Chrome.

Re:...indistinguishable from magic

[ColdWetDog]

Tens of thousands of "Doctors of Philosophy" and just as many historians would disagree with you.

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[ColdWetDog]

Is that because you can or you cannot read the fine articles?

Re: Error 500, Error 404,

[DigiShaman]

It's what happens when you go poking around where you shouldn't. Do not attempt to solve this problem, or the universe will end.

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[ledow]

At times, everything but the front page is being served by a third-party CDN, by the looks of it. When that happens, you get "logged out", and content pages fail with certificate errors because they're not coming from slashdot.org but a cdn domain.

Either slashdot are under attack and keeping quiet, or they're falling over and keeping quiet.

Re:...indistinguishable from magic

[aaaaaaargh!]

Then again, I'm a doctor of philosophy and I agree with the original poster.

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[burtosis]

Slashdot has been on and off broken since it was down for a full half day - attributed to a drive failure and subsequent corruption. I've been suspecting something has been up for about a week.

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[MrL0G1C]

My hunch is attack, since slashdot is a tech site it would be nice if they actually told us what is going on.

And if it is an attack, then is it business or pleasure? Lame either way.

Re:Information shlimfomation

[Anonymous Coward]

Information in physics is defined as the log of number of possible states, which is quite specific, narrowly defined and unrelated to human creativity (or Godel).

Scientists in the Wonderland

[Anonymous Coward]

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." - Nikola Tesla
"The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane" - Nikola Tesla
"There is not self containing theory possible aside from practical meaning, for a language is used in its annunciations, which miplys that developed ideas and complex porocesses of thoughts are alrealy in existance beside the general experience associated with there with. We define things in a phrase using words, these words hale to be explained by other words and so on forever in a complicated maze. There is no bottom to anything, we all upside down." - Oliver Heaviside
"They (Scientists) substitute words for realty, and after that talk about the words." - Edwin Armstrong

Re: Scientists in the Wonderland

[iluvcapra]

Sounds like a bunch of philistine engineers to me. Armstrong's quote could easily be applied to Einstein or Maxwell. Heaviside probably would have condemned the Manhattan Project as a bunch of theorists.

It's telling that Tesla draws the line at Morse, who invented Tesla's chosen field of engineering. And Tesla was a brilliant engineer. But later, as an actual scientist and researcher, as someone that had to do experiments and develop new theory, Tesla was a failure. His work was a dead end.

Re:Scientists in the Wonderland

[d34thm0nk3y]

"Oh shit, I just blew up your power plant" - Nikola Tesla

Re:Scientists in the Wonderland

[justthinkit]

True if one replaces "scientists" with "non-intuitive scientists".

The greats -- Newton, Poincare, Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell -- were intuitive.

Re:Scientists in the Wonderland

[justthinkit]

Einstein first conceived of relativity intuitively. Then had David Hilbert help him with the math. Causing Hilbert to actually conceive the math of relativity first -- though Hilbert graciously always said it was Einstein's theory. And Einstein had two assistants to help with the math as well.
- Pedro Ferreira's "The Perfect Theory"

And of course Newton had to invent the math to do his thing. Translation: he conceived of it first, then created the math for it second.

Re: Scientists in the Wonderland

[iluvcapra]

I've read Tesla's Colorado Springs Notes, he spent years, essentially, inventing magic tricks. Academic citations of his work from this period are non-existent. It was a waste.

Heaviside was a genius and made some of the all-time greatest contributions to mathematical physics. He was also an eccentric loner who went mad in his old age.

Re: Scientists in the Wonderland

[cwsumner]

Wasn't one of Tesla's "magic tricks", the flourescent bulbs that we are all using now?
And a few other things...

Re:...indistinguishable from magic

[Anonymous Coward]

I also have a PhD, in physics, and I disagree with the original poster. There are many others that would disagree too. And some of those that agree with such sentiment seem to be confusing the "what counts with science" with "what science is of reasonable importance to follow through on." It seems a lot easier to for some to just dismiss something as unscientific versus arguing it seems unlikely to be fruitful even if technically fitting in fine with the whole real scientific method of proposing new ideas, checking for some sort of agreement with existing observations, and discussing where to go next (e.g. check against more existing observations, make new observations). Or worse, people dismissing something as unscientific because it contradicts gut feelings.

Re:"to an accuracy of 10 cubic kilometers"

[michelcolman]

Exactly. When they plug in an accuracy that makes more sense, all of a sudden they are 117 orders of magnitude off. In other words, they could have gotten any result they wanted by just picking some arbitrary value for the accuracy. "How much do we need the result to be? OK, then let's pick... 10 cubic kilometers. Because the universe really cares about round units based on the circumference of some arbitrary planet in some arbitrary milky way. See, only three orders of magnitude off, our theory is now better than quantum physics!"

Next month, they'l publish a new paper in which they have refined their theory by taking an accuracy of 0.71 cubic km. There, our refined theory now exactly predicts the correct density of the universe, from first principles! Throw away quantum mechanics, information theory is clearly superior!

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[internerdj]

Sorry. We were running a little low on entropy in non-information bearing degrees of freedom of our information processing apparatus or environment.
Sincerely, Slashdot

Re:...indistinguishable from magic

[neoritter]

Considering that the scientific method was created as a philosophical methodology, I don't find that odd at all. As long as the philosophers keep themselves from going into religious or theological thought then it should be okay (as I wobble my hand and grimace). Remember, there were no scientists prior to the modern concepts of science. Everyone before that was pretty much a philosopher or alchemist of some kind. Heck, even during the Enlightenment period, those who delved into scientific research often spoke on or from philosophical matters.

Re:Error 500, Error 404,

[ultranova]

running a little low on entropy

You'd think someone who can reverse entropy could keep a damn website up...

resonance.is

[DanRanger]

That is what Nassim Haramein is studying at resonance.is and on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Nassi... . Check out one of his articles here: http://resonance.is/firewalls-... . At the lower end of the cosmological scale lies the Plank Spherical Unit: http://resonance.is/news/quest... . Page 5 of Nassim's Scaling Law pdf has a nice graph of the universe http://hiup.org/wp-content/upl... .

The Universe is a simulation

[Martin S.]

The simulation hypothesis contends that reality is in fact a simulation (most likely a computer simulation), of which we, the simulants are totally unaware.

Re:The Universe is a simulation

[MooseTick]

If we are unaware, then how do we have a hypothesis?

Re:The Universe is a simulation

[wytcld]

The concept of "simulation" still requires a reality in which simulation occurs. If nothing exists outside the simulation it's not, in any meaningful sense, a simulation. It's just reality. Also, those who experience a simulation exist outside of it. There is no experiencing of the weather going on within your computer simulation of the weather - although you could do some sort of immersive VR and experience it. But that's because you're in the world it's being simulated from, and do not owe your own existence to the simulation.

Plenty of Evidence

[Roger W Moore]

There is no reason or evidence to suggest that the universe operates in any way that correlates directly to our mathematics

Actually there is a lot of evidence that the universe operates in a way that correlates directly with mathematics. Using our mathematical models of fundamental physics we used them to predict the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, to solve the flaws in the model. Similarly the same principle applied to the discovery of quarks and the W and Z bosons before.

The fact that we can use mathematical models of the fundamental nature of the universe so incredibly successfully to predict new fundamental phenomena that we have never seen before is clear evidence that the universe does work in a manner that correlates with our mathematics. Indeed I would say that this is one of the truly remarkable things about the fundamental nature of the universe: we can construct mathematical models of it which agree perfectly within our, admittedly limited, ability to test them.

Re:Plenty of Evidence

[blue trane]

The use of "perfectly" indicates how strong your faith is. Epicycles "perfectly" predicted planetary motion, thus math underlies everything, and orbits are circular because circles are perfect! Oh wait...

Shrinking Horizon

[Roger W Moore]

Each second we can see another 186 thousand miles, revealing new 'observable universe'.

Actually that is not quite true. The size of the universe that we can see is actually shrinking. This very counterintuitive result is due to the fact that the universe's expansion is accelerating due to Dark Energy. Hence a distant point in space that is currently moving away from us very close to the speed of light today due to the expansion of space will actually be moving away from us faster than the speed of light tomorrow and so will become causally disconnected from us. So with time our horizon will shrink.

In the very distant future the horizon may shrink to the subatomic level and eventually arrive at the planck length itself at which point nobody has a clue as to what will happen since it needs quantum gravity to understand. This is the so-called "Big Rip" end to the universe.

Re:Shrinking Horizon

[burtosis]

Not at all. You Are about a hundred billion years premature. Right now dark energy is having a negligible effect, only just now accelerating the expansion noticably in recent cosmological time. the main effect is the hypothetical light cone from the Big Bang to the present - nearly the same as the last scattering neutrino surface. The visible universe (visible light after reionizarion) is not 'expanding' but previously disconnected locations in space time (last connected only during inflation) are coming into view at light speed. Thus each second we can see farther. At this point in time it has almost zero to do with any expansion or space injection. It's something that is mis-represented to the masses and is a common mis conception. As an example your own two eyes see different 'observable' universes - each can 'see' a few inches beyond the others visible universe.

Re:"to an accuracy of 10 cubic kilometers"

[Paleolibertarian]

Actually the accuracy depends on whether Schroedinger's cat lives.

This isn't science

[charrois]

This has been commented on relentlessly, but it doesn't hurt to add another. I have to assume that this summary of the research is missing something critical (though if this is true, then the abstract of the original paper suffers from the same problem). There is no end of arbitrary values picked to come up with the solution they wanted. Why 10 cubic kilometre voxels? That's not a "fundamental" measurement to the universe. Where does 10^25 stars come from? Most current estimates put the number of stars from 10^23 to 10^24, though nobody really knows for sure of course - and even then, estimates vary widely depending on what we exactly consider a star. And naturally, why does even defining the number of stars themselves have anything to do with energy density of the universe? Stars are just arbitrary conglomerations of matter that have nothing to do with "information content" of the universe unless the only items in the universe fundamentally worth counting are stars. I'm stunned a paper like this was published, let alone slashdotted, unless there is much more to the study than immediately meets the eye. Now, if someone did a study on the information density of fundamental positions (i.e.: resolved down to Planck length), with fundamental particles (fermions and bosons), their momentums, and so on, then it would be a study worth doing. Starting with arbitrary human-derived units that have no cosmological significance makes the entire result of the study meaningless.

Re:The greatest single problem of cosmology

[justthinkit]

Or don't lick your lips. Problem solved.

And Poincare...

[justthinkit]

Poincare's work habits have been compared to a bee flying from flower to flower. Poincare was interested in the way his mind worked; he studied his habits and gave a talk about his observations in 1908 at the Institute of General Psychology in Paris. He linked his way of thinking to how he made several discoveries.

The mathematician Darboux claimed he was un intuitif (intuitive), arguing that this is demonstrated by the fact that he worked so often by visual representation. He did not care about being rigorous and disliked logic. (Despite this opinion, Jacques Hadamard wrote that Poincare's research demonstrated marvelous clarity. and Poincare himself wrote that he believed that logic was not a way to invent but a way to structure ideas and that logic limits ideas.)

- Wiki

Nothing special about stars

[BobJacobsen]

Their numbers work when they encode the positions of all the stars in the Universe to the Planck scale. But there's nothing magic about stars: They're just big (and hot), fluffy objects. What about encoding dust outside stars? The positions of the particles that make up the stars? Etc. And it's not at all clear that the position of a _star_ is meaningful on the Planck scale. So this is all just numerology.

Re:"to an accuracy of 10 cubic kilometers"

[uninformedLuddite]

We can be pretty bloody sure after all these years in a box it's dead.

Dedup and pointers

[jctripp]

Obviously, the Great Simulator has a killer deduplication algorithm with up to 117 orders of magnitude compression. Everything in the known universe resolves to either 117 elements or 36 sub-atomic particles (that we know of), so it just a matter of finding all the element or particle strings in the universe's file layout and replacing most of them with pointers.

Re:Dedup and pointers

[RockDoctor]

That was the underlying theme of a story I read by IIRC Greg Benford a year or so ago. I recall being moderately disappointed, to the extent of not being bothered to go to the library to get the second or third volume of the trilogy.

Hmmm, maybe not Benford. Nothing in his bibliography strikes a resonant tone. I'll have to fish it off the shelf (I remember feeling somewhat conflicted between the writer's reputation and my lack of engagement with the characters, scenario and underlying re-building of the laws of physics. So I don't think I've sent it off to the second-hand-bookshop in the street.)

High school physics back of a napkin calculation

[quax]

Color me unimpressed. While somewhat original the whole approach is completely flawed. There are many more things than just stars in the universe. After all, for all we know, the visible universe only makes up a small portion of all matter.

Re:Information shlimfomation

[blue trane]

Except creativity keeps creating more possible states, therefore more information. New words are created from thought alone.

Re:The greatest single problem of cosmology

[Nehmo]

Ha, when I was a kid in the 60s, my grandmother would always put on fresh lipstick before kissing me.

Yuck!

Re:"to an accuracy of 10 cubic kilometers"

[Nehmo]

We can be pretty bloody sure after all these years in a box it's dead.

But you didn't "observe" that yet, did you? Thus, his cat is still in superposition.