What is the computational power of the universe? What if we consider the cosmos to be the output of a 13.7-billion-year computation?
Can a close look at the universe give us solutions to problems too difficult even for a planet-sized computer to solve?
Can a close look at the universe give us solutions to problems too difficult for a computer – even if we built a computer larger than a planet? Physicist Stephen Jordan reflects on this question in a new video by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), along with a new scientific paper that considers one particular tough problem the universe might answer.
In The Computational Power of the Universe, Jordan does not imagine what we could learn if humanity somehow converted the entire cosmos into a vast computing device (however marvelous a science-fiction premise that idea might make). Rather, he asks, now that the universe has undergone billions of years of change in accordance with the laws of nature, can we use what we see through our telescopes to gain insights into difficult computational problems? After all, computers crunch numbers to simulate complex change. What if we consider the cosmos to be the output of a 13.7-billion year computation?
Jordan’s new paper – one in a series he and his colleagues are working on – looks at a specific example. One computer-stumping question is called the number partitioning problem: If you had a pile of millions of very large numbers and wanted to divide them into two equal piles, how would you do it? The math is so difficult that it’s been considered as a practical basis for cryptography.
As it turns out, the universe has already processed a similar problem physically. Everywhere you look, empty space has a background energy density that is very close to zero. This near-zero value, which Einstein referred to as the Cosmological Constant, implies that the balance between energy contributions from different fields related to fundamental universal forces somehow got sorted out well enough that we ended up with a fairly stable material universe. In essence, we live in a particular solution to partitioning.
Are there other tough problems out there to which the universe holds a shortcut? …to be continued.
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Guess I need to get the Meade 12” LX200 out and do some computer work, haven’t used it since the Eclipse.
I had a meade years ago, auto tracking, great fun, download orbital info, connected up to laptop by serial and watch that baby track orbits automatically 😀 Great for upcoming expected signtings
Sightings even. 😀
You said signtings, were they alien signtings? I have to investigate all these signtings.
Imagine that!?
Serendipity!
?dl=0
Kismet!
I’ll have to go along with the consensus on this one.
42
So it’s models all the way down? Or up? Or out?
When I was a boy we had a beautiful Olivetti mechanical calculator, probably a Divisumma. It was a joy to task it and observe its intricate works, a labyrinth of shaped metal rods, bars and drums.
Of course I set out one day to calculate a billion times a billion and it set out with mechanical glee, but seconds and minutes passed and the multiply cycle did not complete. Internally it did arithmetic as we do on paper and the mechanism that trips on overflow or if you press CLEAR, didn’t. I watched it struggle for awhile and finally, taking pity on it I pulled the plug. When plugged in it resumed its attempt.
Finally Dad and I were looking for its clear/abort mechanism by inspection, then desperately tugging things at random. Finally we found a restraining bar and with a gentle tug and it’s usual flourish… it printed a partial answer and stopped. Whenever someone satirizes Sagan by saying “billions and billions” (he says he never said it and I believe him) I hear our Olivetti chugging away.
My only regret is that I did not save the tape with the partial answer. It might help me to figure out where I am — perhaps where we all are — today.
It was definitely greater than 42.
IMO he is just using platonism, the position that ideals exist to which nature is molded. They had a belief that “the Godhead always uses geometry” . This belief translated into “mathematics generates reality” is very strong in the field of theoretical physics, whereas experimentalists usually are of the opinion that “mathematics is a tool to model reality”.
After all , nature has solved the complex mathematical problem of DNA, for example, and all physical observations, classical and quantum mechanical. We have to measure to get at the mathematics so it is not a strange belief. Nature can be considered a large computational system.
the above is me “anna v”
https://youtu.be/1Bia9bxkzA8
I always thought that the observable Universe could be imagined as a brain working with much slower-than-ours operating speed (non-linearly changing with distance and mass). Fast radio bursts could be its synapses clicking. etc. But all that is a science fiction, not science proper, as well as the most of the modern cosmology.
Lately, my favorite morsel on the cosmological smorgasbord is Shu’s 3-sphere theory: the Universe is eternal and infinite; there is no need for BS like the creationist Big Bang or mythical “dark matter”; speed of light and the gravitational “constant” change with time (hence “red shift”); mass, length, and time mutually transform into each other — and, most importantly, Shu’s theory exactly corresponds with the observational data and correctly predicts them!
Which makes it much more “scientific” than the prevailing “Deus ex machina” Big Bang nonsense.
Maybe time and space exchange each other giving us time, and gravity is the ‘stiction’ of matter as it moves through the dimensional exchange. Thus from the outside this universe is a constant ‘size’.
Or as William Blake poetically wrote it —
Oops that should be —
Maybe time and space exchange each other giving us time’s forward progression, and gravity is the ‘stiction’ of matter as it moves through the dimensional exchange. Thus from the outside this universe is a constant ‘size’.
William Blake, surely, is one of the most interesting and unconventional poets. His moral sense is also remarkable, outside the usual prejudice confines.
I think of the gravitational field as of the force resulting from the difference in the pace of time, which, in turn, depends on the difference of the distance from the center of mass (and depends on the mass — here you already observe the mutual transformation of time, length, and mass (energy), they are various expressions of the same thing, perceived by us as different in three-dimensional world of our senses).
In our heads time is ticking faster than in our feet, so to speak. To maintain molecular bonds in this asynchronous situation, we exert force and experience tension, which feels like “gravitational attraction.”
Rocket acceleration and gravitational acceleration are very different things, there is no equivalence between them if the observer uses precision plumb lines and atomic clocks. If one installs three plimb lines on the ceiling of the windowless experimental chamber, and two atomic clocks on the ceiling and on the floor of the same experimental chamber, under rocket acceleration of 1g plumb lines will be parallel, and atomic clocks will be synchronous. Under gravitational acceleration of 1g plumb lines will point at the center of the mass (not parallel), and the atomic clock on the ceiling will be ahead of the clock on the floor.
With all due respect, so much for Einstein’s principle of equivalence.
— com·put·er
[kəmˈpyo͞odər]
NOUN
an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.
synonyms: personal computer · PC · laptop · netbook · ultraportable · desktop · terminal · mainframe · Internet appliance · puter
a person who makes calculations, especially with a calculating machine. —
It seems silly to me, to speak of the universe computing anything . . or as having computational power. The word is not the thing, nor is the “data” the event or process it quantifies . .
a bird is a bird
slavery means slavery
a knife is a knife
death remains death
– Zbigniew Herbert
Pop quiz ~ Which word is colder, Ice or fire? ; )
Following along these lines, you would require that people see the world with open eyes, as is.
What about brainwashing, then? What about instilling fear and guilt?
Shaping people to be “productive members of the society” (manipulated ignorant slaves)?
Elites and priests, educators and politicians, the whole world of interconnected lies would crash!
This is an impermissible, inexcusable extremism!
By the time we understand the universe well enough to use it as a computational tool; won’t we have worked our way out of this problem with our own computational tools?
How is all this different from what we used to call the actions of ‘Mother Nature’.
Max Planck: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
IMO humanity itself, with its “mass” or “collective” consciousness, would be a much more interesting computational study.
The cowboys had it right. The answer is om, om on the range.
The existance of the universe owes itself to charge.
The exitential question is where did charge come from
“Space time” is junk science
Ugh *existence \ existential
as for this OP, computing means nothing if there is no human in the equation.
This line of thinking in the OP video is self intellect feeding gibberish.
Even if the universe had “computing power”, what would coalate values, provide output, what single input could accept all that output?
Such stupidity boggles the mind
I’m on an epic rant today, junk science annoys me
I want to rip the throat out of people who sell junk science and piss all over their dead corpse, the moderation guys, said to wait my turn… mwahahaha!
I hate queues