"Respected" scientists say we are living in a virtual world

[Helevitia]

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,11484507%255E1702,00.html

[The PIT]

Well it's only extension of god so why not.

[Helevitia]

who's god?

[The PIT]

Dunno some boring git I was talking to the other day.
he got the football result wrong as well

[Helevitia]

That bastard!

[The PIT]

Useless git isn't he

[EnglandJoe]

In this case, the universe would not be all-encompassing but only part of an ensemble Rees and Barrow call the "multiverse".

Anyone read any Terry Pratchett?

I think that unless they can prove this is possible they should stick to science and not philosophy, because I've heard stoner provide more facts supporting the idea than they have in this article.

I think there's a very high POSSIBILITY of being in a virtual world. However I'll be incredibly annoyed if I am, because that would mean I spend my virtual time addicted to a virtual virtuality (the internet).

If I had the choice between a cold hard truth and a nice comfortable lie I'd choose the truth, unless I was alone. I'd have to have at least one person to share the truth with.

[Dr Mordrid]

Check your back issues of Scientific American, Nature and Science. This isn't out of the mainstream at all, though such a "matrix" wouldn't be a computer program but just a result of how the multiverse works.

The multiverse is part of what's called "m theroy" (m = membrane or magic, depending on who's talking), which is now the leading candidate for a "theory of everything" unifying all the basic forces of nature; strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetism and gravity.

Previous attempts at a TOE, including string theory and supergravity, had unified strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetism, but only m theory has suceeded in uninfying the other three forces with gravity.

One of the biggest problems with the previous theories was that they could not explain the relative weakness of gravity vs. the other forces. Think about it; any kitchen magnet can overcome gravity with ease. The same goes for the others.

M theory suceeded by combining features of the various string theories and supergravity in 11 dimensions. One consequence of this shows that gravity is weaker because it's shared between multiple universes while the others are local. Being shared its local strength is reduced.

Another aspect of m theory is its explanation of the Big Bang. It's explanation is that two membranes (dimensional planes) collided and the energy escaped into other dimensional planes, creating our local universe. Previous and subsequent collisions would have created other universe separate and distinct from our own.

One of the more interesting forumations of m theory is called "Matrix Theory"

As for a "holographic universe", that's a relatively new but compelling idea resulting from the latest work on black holes and published in Scientific American and elsewhere. Basically the idea is that our existance is in the quantum world and we are perceiving the universe as a holographic projection of the data contained in that world.

This would explain a lot of things including quantum entanglement, where entangled particles on the other side of the universe from each other can somehow "sense" what happens to its partner and react instantly, seemingly violating Einsteins law that information cannot travel faster than light. In a holographic universe all information would be encoded into every part of the universe, making instant communication between particles in the universe just a decoding issue.

This is also related to "black hole computing", which was another Scientific American article of the last few months.

http://www.cmi.ac.in/~aditya/physicsarchives/holographicuniverse1.html

Black hole computing is very interesting. Basically new calculations indicate that Hawking radiation, the radiation given off by black holes, is coming out in distinct packets. These calculations also indicate that if you encode data into matter by playing with its various quantum states before duming it into a black hole the resulting Hawking radiation can be decoded into the answer to said input data

This may not sound like a very practical computer, but there is work going on at CERN whose whole thrust is the quantity production of miniature black holes in the laboratory using their new Large Hadron Collider, with the idea being to study the properties of Hawking radiation.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html

IF science were ever able to control them to the degree necessary to produce a device based on analyzing Hawking radiation you'd have one helluva new serial processor.

Dr. Mordrid