The Nature of the Universe

18 Apr 2020 - Brent Jacobs

Draft

Starting from the premise laid out by Stephen Wolfram: space and everything in it is made from abstract points which have some relationship with other points, and over time, these relationships change according to a finite set of rules.

A more visual and relatable example of what this looks like in the real world is Conway’s Game of Life. Conway’s Game of Life has a small set of rules which is applied to each square to determine if the square is black or white. The rules are applied to each square one at a time until every square has been set. The the rules are applied to each square again. The process of applying rules to all the squares is called a generation. If the rules have been applied to all the squares 5 times, there have been 5 generations. From this simple setup, complex interactions that somewhat resemble life arise and evolve, hence the name “Game of Life”.

Stephen Wolfram’s idea is similar to Conway’s Game of Life, except the squares of the grid are replaced by abstract points, which are connected to other points. To replicate Conway’s 2D grid of squares, each point would have 8 connections to 8 adjacent points. Software engineers and computer scientists would recognise this as a graph, where the points are nodes, and the relationships are edges. Wolfram’s rules are slightly more complicated than Conway’s rules. Rather than setting some attribute on the point, such as being black or white, the rules replace existing points and relationships with other points and relationships. This means that by applying the rules to the graph we change the very structure of the graph. The graph evolves over time.

Stephen Wolfram suggests that this concept could describe the fundamental nature of the universe. He not only postulates that space can be thought of as being made out of these abstract points, but the matter and particles that make up the physical stuff of the universe are made out of the very same abstract points. This is a fascinating concept. The fundamental particles are simply some structure within the graph. These structures are governed by the same rules that apply to every point and therefore behave in predictable ways. These structures must therefore also interact with one another in predictable ways.

It’s fascinating to think of the universe in this way. It helps to bring new insights into certain physical phenomena such as the speed of light. The speed of light could simply be thought of as the fastest speed that a change at some point in the graph can ripple out and effect other parts of the graph, therefore, there must be some form of causal relationship within the graph.

It could also potentially explain gravity wells. If matter is simply a structure in the graph, as matter particles coalesce, the density of points and connections increases. The more points and connections that exist at a given point in space, the longer it takes to move out of that region of the graph. This could be experienced as a dilation of time or space depending on your perspective.

Another fascinating aspect of these rules, is that the graph can grow over time. For example, if there is a rule that replaces a configuration of three points with a configuration of four points, then the graph now has an extra point than it did before. As the rules are applied to graph it slowly grows over time, but more impressively is that it should grow evenly throughout its entire structure. This has parallels to how scientists suspect that space is expanding at every point at the same rate. This property would mean that parts of the graph are causally disconnected from other parts of the graph. A change in one part of the graph may never be able to propagate to other regions of the graph simple because points are being added faster than changes can ripple between these two regions.

Following on from this concept, we can think of the growth of the graph in two ways. First is the obvious way, as new points are added, the graph spreads out to make room for the new points. The other way, is to think of the graph as taking up a static amount of space and as new points are added the density of the graph increases. Being part of the graph you wouldn’t experience this density in any meaningful way as you simply have the perspective of everything expanding. Its just interesting to think that this isn’t the only perspective.

Additional ideas to discuss

The rules don’t require energy to be applied, they just require specific condition to be met. So no energy is required to expand the graph… it just does because that’s the rules. Following on from this, in theory, there is no such thing entropy. It is perfectly reasonable for a process to continue of forever, just because that’s what the rules dictate. We see thing in Conway’s Game of Life, where certain configurations of squares persist in an endlessly repeating pattern, or other configurations which over time produce and expel other configurations that once formed exist independently and forever.

The idea of being a part of the graph while also measuring and understanding another region of the graph…

The idea that we could understand the rules, and from that create something new… we could build new particles, or things that will rip through space and stop everything from working, either by making every point connect to every point around it, or by disconnecting every point from every other.

The idea of magnifying the minute and replicating it at a higher level. Or the idea or encoding a massive thing into the small.