Auster
New member
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...niversity-of-washington-matrix_n_2282745.html
Physicists have devised a new experiment to test if the universe is a computer.
A philosophical thought experiment has long held that it is more likely than not that we're living inside a machine.
The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847Essentially, Savage said that computers used to build simulations perform "lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations" - dividing space into a four-dimensional grid. Doing so allows researchers to examine the force which binds subatomic particles together into neutrons and protons - but it also allows things to happen in the simulation, including the development of complex physical "signatures", that researchers don't program directly into the computer. In looking for these signatures, such as limitations on the energy held by cosmic rays, they hope to find similarities within our own universe.