Eventful Universe - Revision history

Tom: /* Life Cycle of a Photon */

2026-02-25T18:55:11Z

‎Life Cycle of a Photon

Tom: /* Irreversibility and Power Consumption */

2026-01-01T02:13:54Z

‎Irreversibility and Power Consumption

Tom: /* Evolving Transformations System (ETS) */

2025-03-17T21:25:58Z

‎Evolving Transformations System (ETS)

Tom: /* Abstract */

2025-01-07T04:23:52Z

‎Abstract

Tom: /* Irreversibility and Power Consumption */

2024-12-22T17:03:18Z

‎Irreversibility and Power Consumption

Tom: /* Is the Universe a Computer? */

2024-12-22T02:42:15Z

‎Is the Universe a Computer?

Tom: /* Is the Universe a Computer? */

2024-12-22T02:39:47Z

‎Is the Universe a Computer?

Tom: /* Is the Universe a Computer? */

2024-12-22T02:36:46Z

‎Is the Universe a Computer?

Tom: /* The Direction of Time */

2024-12-22T02:34:52Z

‎The Direction of Time

Tom: /* The Direction of Time */

2024-12-22T02:22:55Z

‎The Direction of Time

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 Bose-Einstein statistics produce accurate results because photons are indistinguishable from each other, one cannot treat any two photons having equal quantum numbers (e.g., polarization and momentum vector) as being two distinct identifiable photons. By analogy, if in an alternate universe coins were to behave like photons, the probability of producing two heads would be one-third, and so would the probability of getting a head and a tail (which equals one-half for the conventional, distinguishable coins). Which is another way to say that only the outcome of an experiment can be statically evaluated, not the path taken by an individual photon.
-"In ordinary classical physics, the typical setup is to imagine that definite things happen, and that in a sense every system follows a definite thread of behavior through time. But the key idea of quantum mechanics is to imagine that many threads of possible behavior are followed, with a definite outcome being found only through a measurement made by an observer."<ref>Stephen Wolfram ''The Wolfram Physics Project: A One-Year Update''   (2021-04-24)     https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/</ref>. This quote of Stephan Wolfram was based on graph theory in contradiction to this paper's focus on discrete events being the only. "real" thing of the universe. So, while events can be, in principle, determined, the same is not true for the position and speed of any particle as any discrete time. For a broader discussion see the wiki page [[Discrete or Continuous]].
+"In ordinary classical physics, the typical setup is to imagine that definite things happen, and that in a sense every system follows a definite thread of behavior through time. But the key idea of quantum mechanics is to imagine that many threads of possible behavior are followed, with a definite outcome being found only through a measurement made by an observer."<ref>Stephen Wolfram ''The Wolfram Physics Project: A One-Year Update''   (2021-04-24)     https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/</ref>. This quote of Stephan Wolfram was based on [[Graph Theory]] in contradiction to this paper's focus on discrete events being the only. "real" thing of the universe. So, while events can be, in principle, determined, the same is not true for the position and speed of any particle as any discrete time. For a broader discussion see the wiki page [[Discrete or Continuous]].
 ===Some History===

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 Quantum computing is teaching us more about computing and about quantum mechanics, but it is not at all clear where this new knowledge is taking us. In the following we will investigate computing elements that consume something, but it is not clear what, perhaps it is the precursor to entropy. This proposition will not depend on existing knowledge, but rather just explore what is possible if we are not completely bound by accepted knowledge. What is created in this endeavor is time itself.
-'''Landauer's principle''' is a physical principle pertaining to the lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of [Computation]] . It holds that "any logically irreversible manipulation of [[Information#As a property in physics|information]], such as the erasure of a [[bit]] or the merging of two [[Computation]] paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding [[entropy]] increase in non-information-bearing degrees of freedom of the information-processing apparatus or its environment".<ref name = bennett>Charles H. Bennett,  ''Notes on Landauer's principle, Reversible Computation and Maxwell's Demon.'' Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics volume=34 issue=3 pp. 501–510 (2003) http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos576/papers/bennett03.pdf DOI 10.1016/S1355-2198(03)00039-X</ref>
+'''Landauer's principle''' is a physical principle pertaining to the lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of [[Computation]] . It holds that "any logically irreversible manipulation of [[Information#As a property in physics|information]], such as the erasure of a [[bit]] or the merging of two [[Computation]] paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding [[entropy]] increase in non-information-bearing degrees of freedom of the information-processing apparatus or its environment".<ref name = bennett>Charles H. Bennett,  ''Notes on Landauer's principle, Reversible Computation and Maxwell's Demon.'' Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics volume=34 issue=3 pp. 501–510 (2003) http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos576/papers/bennett03.pdf DOI 10.1016/S1355-2198(03)00039-X</ref>
 Charles H. Bennett at IBM taught us that computing does not need to consume much power if it is run closer to equilibrium. Unfortunately the speed of such a computer would be too slow to be practical today.

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 Event based solutions have been explored by philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead, <ref name=whitehead> Alfred North Whitehead,  ''Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927–1928'', (1929) Macmillan, New York, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK. </ref> and John Heil<ref> John Heil, ''The Universe as we find it'' Oxford (2015-06-01) ISBN 978-0198738978</ref>. This has been primarily an Ontological investigation with little in the way of physical details. Heil complains that since substance carries properties, but not events, that events are not a suitable ontology for physics. He seems not to be aware of the use of attributes of links in computer science which when faced with a deficient ontology, just changed the ontology.
-A similar event-based model was created at the university of New Brunswick. The class of processes, i.e. similarly structured processes—with a common generative structure— pervades all levels of consideration in ETS. In particular, the most basic concept, the primitive event, is defined via the classes of primal processes.<ref>L. Goldfarb + 4, ''What is a structural representation? Proposal for an event-based representational formalism, Sixth Variation, Tech. Rep. TR07-187'' (2007) Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb/ETSbook/ETS6.pdf</ref> The ETS then go on to create a collection of primitive events, or transformations that are essentially state machines with a fixed set of inputs and outputs. According to the ETS formalism, photon is not a "particle" but is a (spatially instantiated) stream of structured events. The last sentence applies equally well to the models described here. However, the event processing is quite different.
+A similar event-based model was created at the university of New Brunswick. The class of processes, i.e. similarly structured processes—with a common [[Generative Structure]]— pervades all levels of consideration in ETS. In particular, the most basic concept, the primitive event, is defined via the classes of primal processes.<ref>L. Goldfarb + 4, ''What is a structural representation? Proposal for an event-based representational formalism, Sixth Variation, Tech. Rep. TR07-187'' (2007) Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb/ETSbook/ETS6.pdf</ref> The ETS then go on to create a collection of primitive events, or transformations that are essentially state machines with a fixed set of inputs and outputs. According to the ETS formalism, photon is not a "particle" but is a (spatially instantiated) stream of structured events. The last sentence applies equally well to the models described here. However, the event processing is quite different.
 ==References==

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 ==Abstract==
 Models of the universe typically focus on the extremes of very large or very small elements, like collisions of galaxies or of photons and electrons. These are both events between identified objects, which are called entities in computer science. But the existing standard models are created to establish a set of "facts" about one particular mathematical set of assumptions like continuous and well-defined space and time. In these models constructs like the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian are precise and deterministic. In contrast this article will focus on information from the observed events themselves, rather than the commonly accepted assumptions, at least so far as time is concerned. That means that no mathematical formulas that include time as a variable will be assumed to be a fundamental truth. Instead time will arise from a sequence of events as postulated by Whitehead.<ref name=whitehead /> The major theme of this article is that if physics wants to learn about how self-organization can provide answers to open issues, then the best place to look is at places where evolution has been successfully applied. As one example: machine learning has already been enhanced by acknowledging that evolution can bring new techniques and insights to hard technological challenges.
 ==The Model==

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 The problem with these models is that they lead to the static Wheeler-deWitt equation (''Ĥ''(x)|ψ> = 0) which tell us that the universe does not evolve.<ref>Bryce S. deWitt, ''Quantum Theory of Gravity. I. The Canonical Theory'' (1967-08-25) Phys. Rev. 160, 1113 https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.160.1113</ref> Many find that to be a fatal flaw of physics. It simply does not correspond in any way to reality.
-Quantum computing is teaching us more about computing and about quantum mechanics, but it is not at all clear where this new knowledge is taking us. In the following we will investigate computing elements that consume something, but it is not clear what, perhaps it is the precursor to entropy. This proposition will not depend on existing knowledge, but rather just explore what is possible if are not completely bound by accepted knowledge. What is created in this endeavor is time itself.
+Quantum computing is teaching us more about computing and about quantum mechanics, but it is not at all clear where this new knowledge is taking us. In the following we will investigate computing elements that consume something, but it is not clear what, perhaps it is the precursor to entropy. This proposition will not depend on existing knowledge, but rather just explore what is possible if we are not completely bound by accepted knowledge. What is created in this endeavor is time itself.
 '''Landauer's principle''' is a physical principle pertaining to the lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of [Computation]] . It holds that "any logically irreversible manipulation of [[Information#As a property in physics|information]], such as the erasure of a [[bit]] or the merging of two [[Computation]] paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding [[entropy]] increase in non-information-bearing degrees of freedom of the information-processing apparatus or its environment".<ref name = bennett>Charles H. Bennett,  ''Notes on Landauer's principle, Reversible Computation and Maxwell's Demon.'' Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics volume=34 issue=3 pp. 501–510 (2003) http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos576/papers/bennett03.pdf DOI 10.1016/S1355-2198(03)00039-X</ref>

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 ===Is the Universe a Computer?===
-What is the universe computing? As far as we can tell, it is not producing a single answer to a single question.... Instead the universe is computing itself. Powered by Standard Model software, the universe computes quantum fields, chemicals, bacteria, human beings, stars, and galaxies. As it computes, it maps out its own spacetime geometry to the ultimate precision allowed by the laws of physics. The flow of a computation is existence in time.<ref>Seth Lloyd as reported by Alexandra Churikova, ''Is the Universe Actually a Giant Quantum Computer?'' (2015) https://cmsw.mit.edu/angles/2015/is-the-universe-actually-a-giant-quantum-computer/</ref> Turning has taught that we cannot always know if a computation will complete except by running that computation.
+What is the universe computing? As far as we can tell, it is not producing a single answer to a single question.... Instead the universe is computing itself. Powered by Standard Model software, the universe computes quantum fields, chemicals, bacteria, human beings, stars, and galaxies. As it computes, it maps out its own spacetime geometry to the ultimate precision allowed by the laws of physics. The flow of a computation is existence in time.<ref>Seth Lloyd as reported by Alexandra Churikova, ''Is the Universe Actually a Giant Quantum Computer?'' (2015) https://cmsw.mit.edu/angles/2015/is-the-universe-actually-a-giant-quantum-computer/</ref> Turing has taught that we cannot always know if a computation will complete except by running that computation.
 ==What Purpose do Clocks Serve==

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 ===The Direction of Time===
-Fundamental to the idea of irreversibility is that time flows from the past to the future. Quantum Mechanics does not appear to predict that one directional flow. Zurek showed that the direction of the arrow of time could be deduced from decoherence in 1991.<ref>Wojciech H. Zurek, ''Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical -- REVISITED'' https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072</ref> Leonard Susskind predicted that Fractal-Flows determined Time’s Arrow.<ref>Leonard Susskind, ''Fractal-Flows and Time’s Arrow'' (2022-04-07) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6440.pdf</ref> In general it seems that the arrow of time is based in irreversible events which means that the only this irreversibility of events is needed to give time a direction.
+Fundamental to the idea of irreversibility is that time flows from the past to the future. Quantum Mechanics does not appear to predict that one directional flow. Zurek showed that the direction of the arrow of time could be deduced from decoherence in 1991.<ref>Wojciech H. Zurek, ''Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical -- REVISITED'' https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072</ref> Leonard Susskind predicted that Fractal-Flows determined Time’s Arrow.<ref>Leonard Susskind, ''Fractal-Flows and Time’s Arrow'' (2022-04-07) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6440.pdf</ref> In general it seems that the arrow of time is based in irreversible events which means that the only this irreversibility of events is needed to give time a direction. This paper focuses just on events, some of which will seem like decoherence, some like observations, but all will cause the end of one (or more) path and the beginning of another one (or more) path.
 ===Problem Solving===