Universe is a computer

Nature ^ | 3 June 2002 | Phillip Ball

[parsifal]

Is this why we all face the blue screen of death after our 3 score and 10??? parsy.

[RightWhale]

I don't know that there is any memory requirement for optical virtual images. Aren't they constantly created and when the light goes out they are gone only to reappear instantly when the light returns? Only the original object is permanent, and there is just one of those.

[tortoise]

I don't know that there is any memory requirement for optical virtual images. Aren't they constantly created and when the light goes out they are gone only to reappear instantly when the light returns? Only the original object is permanent, and there is just one of those.

I guess it depends on how you look at it. Yes, the photons just bounce back and forth between the mirrors, but that isn't really the point I was trying to make. You can only make the parallel mirror reflections by applying more resources longer to the problem than the image itself requires. If you look at the universe as a computer, there is no way to do it without using extra computing resources.

Of course, there is a more important fundamental problem: parallel mirrors can't make infinite reflections, even in the theoretical. Why? Because there are only two possible photon trajectories from an object placed between the parallel mirrors. First, photons that do not have a trajectory perfectly perpendicular to the mirror will reflect elsewhere. Photons that do have a vector perfectly perpendicular to the mirror will be reflect back into the object that created/reflected the photon in the first place i.e. the image you placed in between the mirrors. The "infinite mirror" effect is only possible to observe if the mirrors are slightly off-axis, at which point the reflections are no longer infinite.

[RightWhale]

They are using parallel mirrors to trap photons and wave packets. It seems to be true that there aren't an infinite number of virtual images in parallel or nearly parallel mirrors, so it looks there wasn't a serious problem to begin with. Besides, the reflected images get smaller as the number of reflections increase, so this is probably a finite sum of an infinite series problem.

[goldstategop]

If the universe is a computer, are we characters in someone's holodeck? Can we be turned off if no one's on the holodeck watching us? And the ultimate question? WHO is watching us and who is programming the computer inside which we live? I feel like the Professor Moriarity character in the Star Trek: The Next Generation "Ship In A Bottle" episode and wonder if we can ever truly leave and see where we are.

[Texaggie79]

damn that skynet!!!