Stop the Universe, I just want to check that computer over there...

Heard what I consider to be a truly novel idea last night on Discovery Channel's "Through the Wormhole: Is There a Creator?" The concept is not a particularly new one: that our Universe is, in fact, a simulation in some super (an entirely inadequate adjective) computer being run by a super (even more inadequate adjective) programmer, much like the Sims games. The justification (not sure I would even call it a theory) is a juxtaposition of Moore's Law and the, for lack of a better word, "grainyness" of simulations.

Moore's Law says that computing power would double roughly every 12 to 18 months. Actually, Moore originally, in 1970, spoke only of the number of transistors that could fit on a chip, and he predicted a doubling every 12 months (which was later revised to 24 months). Though Moore spoke only of the number of transistors, others have applied his Law to other areas, such as memory capacity, storage capacity, even the number of pixels on a display or in a camera.

So, while not new, Moore's Law does tell us that in, say 10 years, computers will be 30 times more powerful (if we use the more conservative 2 year doubling period) and in 50 years they will be 33 MILLION times as powerful. Can you imagine what kind of programs we could run with that kind of computing power?! We must be careful, of course, not to take these predictions too seriously since 50 years is a LONG time in the electronics business and we all know how difficult it is to predict things even 5 years down the road. (I can't even predict what I'm going to have for lunch tomorrow.) The point is that if in our own near future computers could become more powerful than the human brain, is it unreasonable to suppose there could exist a computer that is so powerful that it could simulate a universe as complex as our own?

The other part of the justification for the simulated Universe proposal is that a common characteristic of all simulations is that as one zooms in on any artificial construct, an image, for example, one reaches a point where one begins to see the "pixels" that make up the image. (We conveniently ignore fractals.) One reaches a level of detail where the basic building blocks become visible. The proposal says that we are now beginning to see the building blocks of the Universe in the form of quarks and the other sub-nuclear particles: that their existence points to the Universe as a simulation.

As I said, a novel idea.

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet but take comfort in the proposition that in order to determine whether our Universe is a simulation either we must leave this Universe, or the Super programmer must enter it. I'm quite certain the former is not possible and can say nothing about the latter, so as far as I'm concerned the question does not exist.

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Now, what am I going to write about today...