Simulated Universe

Are we in one?

January 03, 2023

Are we in a smulation? Beyond science fiction? May be 50-50 says Scientific American. Scientific bounds of such hypothesis were presented by David Kipping in his paper.

But this piece is not about that, this is about a question that precedes that: Can the Universe be Simulated?

When someone says Universe, the visual that pops up could be something that is far distant and zoomed out of earth, could be a black space with glitters from celestial objects and could be a flash of light originating from some unknown source. It is a catch all for everything that exists and far away from our desks.

If those who had exposure to basic physics and with decent imagination, they might think of gravitational forces, orbits and interactions between them.

The next level would be the force of gravity being determined by a universal gravitational constant, G, and of the "energy of a particle" being determined by its rest mass, such as the mass of an electron, me. You think of the speed of light, c, and for quantum mechanics, Planck's constant, ħ.

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Ethan Siegal writes for Forbes that it takes 26 dimensionless constants to describe the Universe as simply and completely as possible. This is a high level listing of the variables with links for basics. For details, please refer to the complete article:

1.) The fine-structure constant, or the strength of the electromagnetic interaction.

2.) The strong coupling constant, which defines the strength of the force that holds protons and neutrons together.

3–17.) We have fifteen particles in the Standard Model: the six quarks, six leptons, the W, Z, and the Higgs boson, that all have a rest mass.

18–21.) The quark mixing parameters. We have six different types of quarks

22–25.) The neutrino mixing parameters. Four parameters that detail how neutrinos mix with one another

26.) The cosmological constant which describe the amount of that acceleration.

There are still four puzzles that may yet require additional constants to solve. These are:

  1. The problem of the matter-antimatter asymmetry.

  2. The problem of cosmic inflation.

  3. The problem of dark matter.

  4. The problem of strong CPviolation.

The composition and existence of matter, the origins of the universe and unity of quantum mechanics with general relativity are still considered to be the foundations of physics related to universe. This in combination with fundamental emergent laws such as evolution by natural selection and laws of chemical bonding, with the help of Computation can help build a simulator.

As Ethan concludes “if you give me the laws of physics and these 26 constants, I can throw these into a computer and tell it to simulate my Universe.”

Other sources:

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash