How to build our Universe using only 4 rules
The universe is a complicated place. There are dozens of laws that govern it with new fields and subatomic particles theorized about each year. It seems the more we investigate it, the more complicated it becomes. On top of that a lot of the fundamental forces are finely tuned to such a degree that if they were were altered by the tiniest fraction, the universe could not exist.
This points to two conceivable options for how the universe came to be. The first one is that it was created by an external entity who chose the right configurations. The second is that it evolved into existence through a multiverse, with an infinite amount of other universes with different configurations, and us just happening to be in the right one. These ideas are not new and I will not be discussing them in great detail.
What both of these theories point to however, is an external universe to ours, with different rules. If our universe was created by an entity, he must exist inside a universe of his own, which would have the same question about it’s existence as ours. So I guess you could say that eventually, you just end up with the second scenario, a universal evolution.
If you suppose that in the very very beginning of this evolution there was absolutely nothing, and right now we have a complicated universe with lots of rules, the evolution must involve a series of more and more complicated universes. So what is the simplest universe we could imagine that may eventually give rise to a universe like ours?
I’d like to introduce to you (for those of you who don’t already know), Conway’s game of life. This is known as a “cellular automaton” with 4 basic rules:
For a space that is 'populated':
Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by solitude.
Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.
For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated'
Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.
If you draw some stuff on the grid and press “Next” you will see the result after one iteration. If you press play you will see this effect iterating and generating patterns. Out of these patterns emerge “life forms” which are usually small basic repeating patterns which can sometimes move on their own accord, but can also be large complicated patterns which “breed” other life forms. If you want to know more I suggest you read the Wikipedia page as I don’t want to explain the whole thing to you.
Over the years people have experimented more and more with this game and have created more and more complicated systems, the most mind blowing of which was creating the game inside the game!
This is an example of the “the creator” I was talking about in the beginning of this article, but with enough cells and time could eventually emerge on it’s own. Yes it would take a lot of cells and a lot of time but if you consider the age and size of our universe it’s not impossible to imagine.
There is one extra thing needed for Conway’s game to become our actual universe: Evolution. If you imagine the game on an infinite canvas with a googolplex cells creating a ridiculous amount of patterns, all we need is one new extra rule to emerge for evolution to be inferred. This could be from the amassing of too many cells in one place (black hole) causing the calculation to break down or could be from an inherent instability in the 4 basic rules. Remember that Conway’s life is just one Cellular Automaton and there are hundreds of other variations with just 3 or 4 rules. If it’s possible to create the game inside the game, it must also be possible to create another game with a different set of rules!
Yes I am leaving a lot this to your imagination and not drawing any conclusions for now. This concept doesn’t strictly answer any questions but does point to a way that our laws could have come into being with out being “written” directly. Interestingly, using a powerful enough supercomputer we could see for ourselves if another game emerges given a big enough canvas. Maybe lifeforms complicated enough to realise they too are a simulation inside a simulation inside a simulation might arise!
The next task is working out the original “one rule” for the very first universe ;) Thanks for reading, follow me for more existential musings, sociopolitical ideas, tech tutorials, futurism concepts and even funny stories!
I had to remove the paragraphing towards the end because Steemit's styling broke (the paragraphs became invisible) when I left it in... If someone knows how to fix this let me know.
Sounds like you placed an open tag somewhere, and didn't place a closing tag.
Do you understand HTML tags? What about Markdown?
Ah it was because I put the youtube link inside an "a" tag (I didn't originally intend on having the video embedded) and Steemit's parser must have generated the embed code inside the "a" tag and yea...
I am not agreeing with the introduction to your post. Just to mention two points among others:
That's not true. The last discovered particle was the Higgs boson in 2012 and the one before was the top quark in 1995... The number of laws governing the particle interactions is a very small number (one hand is enough to enumerate them).
This is also not true. The forces and the way they work do not require any fine tuning and this is not connected to the existence of the universe at all. You mix things here.
Ok I guess the word "discovered" should be redacted. I meant theorized about. I'm constantly reading articles that are trying to patch holes in our current understanding using new particles or fields.
Your second point is very much up for debate. This is the most obvious thing I can link you to on the subject, but the discussion is very extensive if you read around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
There are plenty of theories beyond the standard model. These usually assume new particles that could be discovered if these theories are realized in Nature. This is however far from being the case in light of current data. The Standard Model however features many conceptual issues and practical limitations so that it is generally considered as a low-energy limit of a more fundamental theory to be discovered. This is why theories beyond the Standard Model are designed and studied at the moment: to be prepared for the exploration phase at the LHC.
Concerning the fine-tuning, this is one of the conceptual issues mentioned above. This has nothing to do with the forces, but with the Higgs boson and the quantum corrections to its mass (and the fact that we have two different scales in the game: the Planck scale where we know the Standard Model mist be replaced my something else and the electroweak scale which is the currently probed energy regime). Many of the theories beyond the Standard Model address this problem.
I hope I clarified :) Otherwise, do not hesitate to ask. This is my day job ^^
The article is merely suggesting how we can come to a seemingly complicated universe from a few basic rules.
I know. I was only complaining about the (first version of the) introduction :)
This is awesome! I hadn't heard about the game-within-the-game before. That is a beautiful, meta, fun thing. Nice post!