Starship Asterisk*

Straight to the point.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... tions.html

can somebody please explain the last sentence in the above link.

Quote: ''it will mean all reality is virtual''.

Next: Could we change the name from The Big Bang, To The Quantum fluctuation?

Mark

The last sentence is a joke -- seriously, it's meant to be funny

The article is tongue-in-cheek and shouldn't be taken completely literally. The title is a give away -- "It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations" -- no sense anyone else arguing, it's all been confirmed

For starters

Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.

is supported by a simulation, not by an observation.

The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons.

For now, Dürr's calculation . . . tells us that most of our mass comes from virtual quarks and gluons fizzing away in the quantum vacuum.
. . .
The Higgs field is also thought to make a small contribution, giving mass to individual quarks as well as to electrons and some other particles. The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual.

This is one simulation, not a fait accompli -- and to state that "The Higgs field makes a small contribution" and then leap to "If the Higgs exists, it will mean that all reality is virtual." is a huge leap.

The author of the simulation admits that

"There is no computer on Earth that could possibly store such a big matrix in its memory," Dürr told New Scientist, "so some trickery goes into evaluating it."

Aha!! The trickery

But what a humbling idea - that not only the universe but that you and I, amount to something randomly created out of nothing!!

If there turns out to be a germ of truth to how these ideas are presented in the New Scientist article, then the idea of the cosmological constant as vacuum energy and the fact that space itself has energy associated with it will become even more important.

We could all turn out to be made out of "dark energy" -- no wonder I can't do anything right!!!

canuck100 wrote:The last sentence is a joke -- seriously, it's meant to be funny

If you had my mind bud, you would not find it funny.

A computer program universe, does not make me laugh.

but thanks for your reply.

Mark

Whatever flavour of BBT/LamdaCDM or its alternate wins out, the winner will be decided by converging simulations. The state of the math used in modern physics has become complex that the only way to do any theoretical work or to explain observations is with computer simulations.

That's why it's so hard for me as a 'techie' but to nowhere that extent to decide which conceptual interpretation to support and which to discard. Sometimes the only way to approach such a situation is with some humour!

canuck100 wrote:Whatever flavour of BBT/LamdaCDM or its alternate wins out, the winner will be decided by converging simulations. The state of the math used in modern physics has become complex that the only way to do any theoretical work or to explain observations is with computer simulations.

That's why it's so hard for me as a 'techie' but to nowhere that extent to decide which conceptual interpretation to support and which to discard. Sometimes the only way to approach such a situation is with some humour!

Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. A computer cannot imagine .. it can only be programmed with the the imaginations of the programmer. Also, we can approach cosmology with humility, knowing we have only touched the surface of a nearly infinite source of knowledge .. that humility would ensure power structures would not take precedence over discovery, if it that humility was welcomed instead of castigated.