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posted by mrpg on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-what-we-want-you-to-think dept.

Physicists have "confirmed" that we "aren't" "living" in a computer "simulation":

Scientists have discovered that it's impossible to model the physics of our universe on even the biggest computer.

What that means is that we're probably not living in a computer simulation.

Theoretical physicists Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin from the University of Oxford and the Hebrew University in Israel applied Monte Carlo simulations (computations used to generate probabilities) to quantum objects moving through various dimensions and found that classical systems cannot create the mathematics necessary to describe quantum systems. They showed this by proving that classical physics can't erase the sign problem, a particular quirk of quantum Monte Carlo simulations of gravitational anomalies (like warped spacetime, except in this case the researchers used an analogue from condensed matter physics).

Therefore, according to Ringel and Kovrizhin, classical computers most certainly aren't controlling our universe.

Which type of computers are we being simulated on?

Also at Newsweek.

Quantized gravitational responses, the sign problem, and quantum complexity (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701758) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:31AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:31AM (#577339) Journal

    I just skimmed through the actual scientific article, and it doesn't speak at all about our universe possibly being simulated by whatever type of computer. Just about the ability to simulate local parts of our universe on computers. While not explicitly stated, it seems obvious that they mean computers that exist or could be built here on Earth.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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