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US scientists are attempting to find out whether all of humanity is currently living a Matrix-style computer simulation being run on supercomputers of the future.
According to researchers at the University of Washington, there are tests that could be done to begin to work out whether we are in fact real, or merely a simulation created by a futuristic android on its lunch break.
Currently, computer simulations are decades away from creating even a primitive working model of the universe. In fact, scientists are able to accurately model only a 100 trillionth of a metre, with work to create a model of a full human being still out of reach.
By looking for underlying patterns, physicists believe that it may be possible to work out if we are existing in a computer created universe, created many years in the future. Looking at constraints imposed on simulations by limited resources could show signs that we are mere bit-part players in a Matrix-style film plot.
It will take many years to reach the computational power to give a real glimpse of whether we are living in a simulation, the scientists contend, but even by looking at the tiny portion of the universe that we can currently accurately model, it may be possible to detect 'signatures' of constraints on physical processes that could point to a simulation.
The researchers suggest that a signature could show up as a limitation in the energy of cosmic rays, for example. By testing the behaviour of cosmic rays on underlying 'lattice' frameworks governing rules of physics that could exist in future models of the universe, the researchers could find patterns that could point to a simulation.
“This is the first testable signature of such an idea,” one of the researchers, Martin Savage, said.
Aside from the rather mind-boggling proposition that we may be part of a computer simulation, another researcher pointed out that this would bring up the possibility of inter-universe computer platforms, and the potential to communicate across these.
“Then the question is, ‘Can you communicate with those other universes if they are running on the same platform?’” UW graduate student, Zohreh Davoudi, asked. [Reply]
IBM announced today a major advance in the ability to use light instead of electrical signals to transmit information for future computing. The breakthrough technology – called "silicon nanophotonics" – allows the integration of different optical components side-by-side with electrical circuits on a single silicon chip using, for the first time, sub-100nm semiconductor technology. Silicon nanophotonics takes advantage of pulses of light for communication and provides a super highway for large volumes of data to move at rapid speeds between computer chips in servers, large datacenters, and supercomputers, thus alleviating the limitations of congested data traffic and high-cost traditional interconnects.
"This technology breakthrough is a result of more than a decade of pioneering research at IBM," said Dr. John E. Kelly, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research. "This allows us to move silicon nanophotonics technology into a real-world manufacturing environment that will have impact across a range of applications."
IBM Silicon Nanophotonics technology is capable of integrating optical and electrical circuits side-by-side on the same chip. The amount of data being created and transmitted over enterprise networks continues to grow due to an explosion of new applications and services. Silicon nanophotonics, now primed for commercial development, can enable the industry to keep pace with increasing demands in chip performance and computing power.
Businesses are entering a new era of computing that requires systems to process and analyze, in real-time, huge volumes of information known as Big Data. Silicon nanophotonics technology provides answers to Big Data challenges by seamlessly connecting various parts of large systems, whether few centimeters or few kilometers apart from each other, and move terabytes of data via pulses of light through optical fibers. Building on its initial proof of concept in 2010, IBM has solved the key challenges of transferring the silicon nanophotonics technology into the commercial foundry.
By adding a few processing modules into a high-performance 90nm CMOS fabrication line, a variety of silicon nanophotonics components such as wavelength division multiplexers (WDM), modulators, and detectors are integrated side-by-side with a CMOS electrical circuitry. As a result, single-chip optical communications transceivers can be manufactured in a conventional semiconductor foundry, providing significant cost reduction over traditional approaches.
IBM's CMOS nanophotonics technology demonstrates transceivers to exceed the data rate of 25Gbps per channel. In addition, the technology is capable of feeding a number of parallel optical data streams into a single fiber by utilizing compact on-chip wavelength-division multiplexing devices. The ability to multiplex large data streams at high data rates will allow future scaling of optical communications capable of delivering terabytes of data between distant parts of computer. [Reply]
Originally Posted by notorious:
No, but eventually you can broken down atom by atom, destroyed, then reconstructed with new material after your info has been transmitted via light.
AKA "beaming".
Real limit to that is computing power to "remember" exactly where the atoms were originally.
Quantum computing may be able to aid that however [Reply]
Let me get this straight. IF the atoms were able to "beam" with a sufficient level of accuracy, you would basically clone yourself (while the "original" is destroyed). Would your consciousness be cloned as well? I guess it would. Interesting. [Reply]
Originally Posted by "Bob" Dobbs:
Let me get this straight. IF the atoms were able to "beam" with a sufficient level of accuracy, you would basically clone yourself (while the "original" is destroyed). Interesting.
Aye that's the question that makes it interesting. Who wants to go first? Hopefully it doesn't mean a digital lobotomy. [Reply]
