The Nature of the Universe, Time Travel and More...
- Thread starter Will The Serious
- Start date
Dragons are VERY interesting.
-Will
-Will
I remember reading a not serious early 1980s' OMNI article about how one could make up a theory for why dragons might have worked and why their fire-breathing mechanism might have prevented them from leaving any evidence of their existence. I can't find that article online, but there's a similar one I found in Discover magazine.
The Science Behind Mythical Dragons | Discover Magazine
The Science Behind Mythical Dragons | Discover Magazine
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Cosmic String found?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.11831.pdf
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.11831.pdf
It's not the first such candidate, of course. Previous candidates have been eliminated for various reasons. Although it was once thought that cosmic strings were responsible for much of the formation of galactic superclusters in the universe, their contribution is now estimated at around 10%. The hypothesis that they are related to the tiny strings of string theory has come back into vogue following theoretical work on M-theory, D-branes and AdS/CFT correspondence. I have no doubt that branchial theory also allows them as it encompasses anything that is computable.
The Nexus of Star Trek Generations was possibly intended to be a cosmic string, although it was a somewhat magical, dramatically action friendly one.
The Nexus of Star Trek Generations was possibly intended to be a cosmic string, although it was a somewhat magical, dramatically action friendly one.
The Bekenstein bound limits the amount of information that can be stored within a spherical volume to the entropy of a black hole with the same surface area. It places an upper limit on the thermodynamic entropy or Shannon entropy for a finite region of space that contains a finite amount of energy. (It also implies that an idealised, non-finite Turing machine is not realisable as a finite device.)
The maximal number of bits that are required to describe any possible quantum state of a finite volume containing finite energy is proportional to the number of Planck areas (2.6 x 10^-70 m²) that are required to cover the surface that encloses the volume.
The Bekenstein bound for the average human brain is about 2.16 × 10^68 bits, assuming a radius of 6.7 x 10^-2 m. (Here, brains are estimated as spheres - just like cows.) This represents the maximal information that is required to simulate this brain down to the quantum level, including all its possible states. A quantum computer with that many qubits could simulate any state of human consciousness - including the entire life experience of any human that has ever lived or that could ever exist. It also represents a fundamental limit on human cognition.
The radius of the observable universe is about 46 billion (4.6 x 10^10) light years. One light year is 9.46 x 10^15 m, so the radius is 4.35 x 10^26 m. The Bekenstein bound is proportional to the area of the contained region, so the Bekenstein bound for the universe is (4.35 x 10^26/6.7 x 10^-2)² x 2.16 x 10^68 = (6.5 x 10^27)² x 2.16 x 10^68 = 9.13 x 10^123 bits or 10^23 googol bits.*
If some metaphysical entity wanted to simulate all possible conscious entities whose centres of cognition have a volume less than or equal to that of a human brain, it's much, much easy to achieve that than it is to simulate an entire universe. It's not impossible that I or you are such a simulated entity - the postmodern version of the brain in the jar - except that we would all share the one jar.
* The important part is that both bounds are extremely large, yet finite. The number of possible states is 2 raised to the number of bits as the power, which is still finite.
The maximal number of bits that are required to describe any possible quantum state of a finite volume containing finite energy is proportional to the number of Planck areas (2.6 x 10^-70 m²) that are required to cover the surface that encloses the volume.
The Bekenstein bound for the average human brain is about 2.16 × 10^68 bits, assuming a radius of 6.7 x 10^-2 m. (Here, brains are estimated as spheres - just like cows.) This represents the maximal information that is required to simulate this brain down to the quantum level, including all its possible states. A quantum computer with that many qubits could simulate any state of human consciousness - including the entire life experience of any human that has ever lived or that could ever exist. It also represents a fundamental limit on human cognition.
The radius of the observable universe is about 46 billion (4.6 x 10^10) light years. One light year is 9.46 x 10^15 m, so the radius is 4.35 x 10^26 m. The Bekenstein bound is proportional to the area of the contained region, so the Bekenstein bound for the universe is (4.35 x 10^26/6.7 x 10^-2)² x 2.16 x 10^68 = (6.5 x 10^27)² x 2.16 x 10^68 = 9.13 x 10^123 bits or 10^23 googol bits.*
If some metaphysical entity wanted to simulate all possible conscious entities whose centres of cognition have a volume less than or equal to that of a human brain, it's much, much easy to achieve that than it is to simulate an entire universe. It's not impossible that I or you are such a simulated entity - the postmodern version of the brain in the jar - except that we would all share the one jar.
* The important part is that both bounds are extremely large, yet finite. The number of possible states is 2 raised to the number of bits as the power, which is still finite.
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I was wondering if anyone has considered if “dark matter” is just the cumulative gravity of all other parallel universes?
It depends who you ask:
Q: Could dark matter actually be the “gravitational shadow” of parallel universes? | Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist
Dark matter is just the pull of other universes | New Scientist
I'd say we just don't know - yet.
Q: Could dark matter actually be the “gravitational shadow” of parallel universes? | Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist
Dark matter is just the pull of other universes | New Scientist
I'd say we just don't know - yet.
I should have said the cumulative gravity from the entire mass of all the other parallel universes.
I believe that even an atom has a gravitational field, although it is a minuscule one. Perhaps even virtual particles have one as well, just not for very long.
I believe that even an atom has a gravitational field, although it is a minuscule one. Perhaps even virtual particles have one as well, just not for very long.
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Could a cosmic string lead to a cosmic ball of yarn?
Imagine the size of a cosmic kitten!
Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.
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Some formulations of brane theory allow the effects of gravity to leak between branes, but I don't know the supposed range, how the effects decrease, nor how they are supposed to be summed.
Horribly large numbers arise when one tries to calculate the vacuum energy - it's over 120 orders of magnitude too large. Attempts to construct a theory of quantum gravity result in infinities. Frankly, it's an embarrassment. There is perhaps a fundamental flaw in our conceptualisation of the Universe at the smallest scales. Unfortunately, virtual particles underpin much of modern physics, so it would be a big upheaval to replace them. Vacuum energy is observed experimentally as spontaneous emission, the Casimir effect and the Lamb shift, so it's real enough but just not that huge. I suspect that the resolution will be to embrace some consistent histories interpretation of quantum mechanics, where the virtual particles are replaced by actual particles in different branches of a multiverse.
A potential problem is that the mathematics might be tweaked to give believable numbers, but there are potentially so many adjustable constants (as in the Standard Model) that the theory becomes experimentally unfalsifiable. It becomes an exercise similar to crafting epicycles in the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. One day, a new Copernicus, Kepler and Newton might come along to simplify our model of such things, but even then it might well just be a waystation on the path to a deeper theory. Or, perhaps, Stephen Wolfram is correct and we have hit a fundamental limit of computational irreducibility.
Some think they already have:
I know this may not be a popular opinion, but I do believe in a Creator, but I am still curious as to how the universe actually works.
Who created the Creator? Who created the Creator's creator? Ad infinitum...
Honestly, the idea that the universe or multiverse is the result of a random fluctuation from nothing at all is as big a stretch. If something like branchial theory is valid, it might be impossible to examine the ruliad or how it is determined. We might never have an answer to metaphysical questions such as these.
Honestly, the idea that the universe or multiverse is the result of a random fluctuation from nothing at all is as big a stretch. If something like branchial theory is valid, it might be impossible to examine the ruliad or how it is determined. We might never have an answer to metaphysical questions such as these.
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Sounds like an episode of Doctor Who from the Tennant era.
The concept of a Boltzmann Brain being the first thing to evolve is interesting (The Great Intelligence).
many-worlds
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-su...e-may-not-be-living-in-a-multiverse-after-all
many-worlds
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-su...e-may-not-be-living-in-a-multiverse-after-all
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Similar to Starlord's dad, Ego (movie version). We don't observe Boltzmann brains, but we're much better at procreation even if we're much less likely to exist. I'd argue evolution fixes that - simple prokaryotes are more likely to arise first in a multiverse than multicellular eukaryotes, but time, random mutation, competition and dead ends provide the ratchet, possibly assisted by the multiverse again. If you're just a brain floating in the void, it's a struggle to go beyond that even if you can somehow magically survive.
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