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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)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arslan on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:30AM
Umm... why does the whole 'god idea' have to go away if we do prove it is a simulation.
It could just mean that whoever created that simulation is god (are the gods). It could mean a different religion or a change in how one interprets their religion - of course in some conservative ones their head explodes. Maybe the scientologists will tweak their narrative to have Xenu fit the owner of the simulator.
From a scientific point of view it is interesting as it could mean we're not a random by-product of the environment or we could still be random in that the simulation creator(s) never really planned for us but the broader universe simulation - and at this point we might not have been noticed given the relative size of the universe to us, maybe if we start destroying a few galaxies maybe we can get some attention or not if we think that kind of attention isn't necessarily healthy.