The Latest in Space and Time (as far as I know)

James Snover

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Space: what is it? It's a pretty important question, really, and it turns out that since Einstein we have learned space is not just an empty stage, waiting for something to happen. Space itself can be stretched, curved, and expanded. We've learned time is an equal part of it, so it's better described as "spacetime." And if time can be sped up and slowed down (and it can, we know it) then so can space. In fact it has to be expanded and contracted to accomodate time dilation; can't have one without the other.

In the most recent attempts to reconcile space and gravity with quantum mechanics, several new approaches have been thought up and are being worked on: that space, like the oceans of water on Earth, is an emergent property. For example, take one molecule of water: it can't carry the force in a wave. It doesn't boil, it doesn't freeze. It doesn't expand when it freezes and shrink when it melts, because none of those properties apply to an individual molecule of H2O. ONLY when you get quadrillions of H2O molecules collected together, do get the emergent behaviors of freezing, boiling, carrying waves, etc.

Likewise, one "grain," for lack of a better term, of space, does not stretch, contract, or show any effects of time dilation. But fill a universe with untold septillions of such grains? Now you have spacetime, now you have expansion, contraction, frame dragging, planets and other bodies precessing in orbits around other bodies, apples falling on the heads of sons of British farmers, the inverse-square law ... the whole thing.

We have identified two quantum properties which may, in fact, be one and the same thing: quantum entanglement and quantum wormholes. One of the conclusions that fell out of Einstien's Special Theory of Relativity is the idea that black hole interiors could be one and the same between what, to us in the outside of the universe, looks like two different black holes.

Quantum entanglement describes how two equal and opposite particles can be created, and what affects one, will instantly affect the other, no matter the distance between them.

Both entanglement and wormholes were developed from Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity. Einstein & Rosen proposed wormholes, first. Then a few years later, Einstein, Rosen and Podulsky came up with particle entanglement at the quantum level. Einstein _hated_ both ideas. All the time he spent working on them to further develop them (the rest of his life, the last 40 years of it), he was hoping to finally find something to conclusively dis-prove them, he hated them so much. But sadly, he couldn't. And that may have been a lucky thing, because:

New research (not proven, but looks promising) seems to indicate spacetime is an emergent phenomena that happens once you get a certain minimum amount of universe within which to work. That spacetime is a direct result of a bunch of "grains," (or qubits, or voxels (my favorite)) with all it's underlying wormholes and entanglement tying them together in ways we don't yet fully comprehend. Entanglement and wormholes may be one and the same thing, and they appear to be much more basic to the universe than even spacetime itself. They may be that from which spacetime emerges.
 

James Snover

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Or this could be a simulation.

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My problem with that is: anyone/thing that could build a simulation like this? Why would they bother? If they can do this, what could they possibly have to learn that they don't already know?
 

quad

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My problem with that is: anyone/thing that could build a simulation like this? Why would they bother? If they can do this, what could they possibly have to learn that they don't already know?
Simulations can be cooler than reality. Look at video games. You can have a more fantastical world in a video game than reality. So the allure would be that you can create an idealized world in a simulation. Who would not want to be able to live in a mansion on an island or fantastical mountain range with a gorgeous lake, mega yacht. And with a couple of moons and suns to boot in your sky. In reality you would live in a 10'x10' cube but the simulation would make you believe you have an amazing life.

I have also read that it would be easier to simulate a very complex universe if you are in base reality which makes sense to me. Assume we are in a simulation. To now simulate another complex universe inside a simulation would require a lot of processing power for the parent / host machine. Look at virtual machines for example. The graphics processing power in a virtual machine is not as much as the base operating system. I know Nvidia has drivers and hardware that can do high end graphics processing in a virtualized environment. But running a virtual machine inside a virtual machine will result in less power and resources for the guest machine.

So eventually you will not have enough processing power to simulate the entire universe if you are yourself a simulation. Also imagine what kind of processing power and energy sources will be required to simulate something as complex as our universe. I wonder if a Dyson Structure that harnesses the power of a star in base reality would provide enough power. Or a device that uses the energy output of a galaxy? Also would a base reality even have stars, galaxies etc? Perhaps the base reality would be completely different than a simulation with a different set of laws?

The other question is what if the universe has to be rebooted because of a glitch or update? How come we never experience this if we are in a simulation? In the VMware world you have high availability so a virtual machine can be moved from one host to another on the fly. And if one host goes offline it is not an issue because it is replicated in realtime on multiple hosts. Perhaps the simulation software would be so advanced that updates can be made without rebooting the simulation. In Windows 10 for example you can update your GPU drivers without rebooting the machine. But you do see the screen black out as the new driver is installed. Some things to ponder.

But what happens if we are eventually able to simulate a complex universe? How can you then discount being in a simulation yourself?

 

quad

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Why do we have fish tanks?
To amuse ourselves.

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed a trilemma that he called "the simulation argument". Despite the name, Bostrom's "simulation argument" does not directly argue that humans live in a simulation; instead, Bostrom's trilemma argues that one of three unlikely-seeming propositions is almost certainly true:

  1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or
  2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or
  3. "The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one."
 

derklug

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The universe began when I was born and will end when I die.
 

Fat Boss

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I remember seeing (online) a steam engine that used one molecule of water. It was made by Sandia Labs and etched out of silicon. It would boil, which pushed a silicon piston, then condense and the piston would retract.
 

James Snover

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I remember seeing (online) a steam engine that used one molecule of water. It was made by Sandia Labs and etched out of silicon. It would boil, which pushed a silicon piston, then condense and the piston would retract.

There had to be a bit more to it than one molecule of water, then. I’d like to find the article, though.


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