Digital_physics
Digital physics
The idea that the universe is a digital computation device
Digital physics is a speculative idea that the universe can be conceived of as a vast, digital computation device, or as the output of a deterministic or probabilistic computer program.[1] The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was proposed by Konrad Zuse in his 1969 book Rechnender Raum[2] ("Calculating-space").[3] The term digital physics was coined in 1978 by Edward Fredkin,[4] who later came to prefer the term digital philosophy.[5] Fredkin encouraged the creation of a digital physics group at what was then MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, with Tommaso Toffoli and Norman Margolus as primary figures.
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Digital physics suggests that there exists, at least in principle, a program for a universal computer that computes the evolution of the universe. The computer could be, for example, a huge cellular automaton.[1][6]
Extant models of digital physics appear incompatible with the existence of several continuous characters of physical symmetries,[7] e.g., rotational symmetry, translational symmetry, Lorentz symmetry, and the Lie group gauge invariance of Yang–Mills theories, all central to current physical theory. Moreover, extant models of digital physics violate various well-established features of quantum physics, belonging to the class of theories with local hidden variables that have so far been ruled out experimentally by physicists using Bell's theorem.[8][9]
However, covariant discrete theories can be formulated that preserve the aforementioned symmetries.[10][11]
