Is it possible to simulate the whole universe?

Could scientists perfectly simulate the entire universe in a computer, down to the last atom? No. Even with an incredibly powerful computer, scientists could never perfectly simulate the entire universe in a computer.

How many bits would it take to simulate the universe?

For decent precision, you want to use at least 16 bits, so you end up with approximately 1079 to 1080 bits. This is more than (or of the same order as) there are atoms in the entire universe.

What was the smallest size of the universe?

The Planck length A Planck length is 1.6 x 10^-35 meters (the number 16 preceded by 34 zeroes and a decimal point) — an incomprehensibly small scale that is implicated in various aspects of physics.

How much information does the universe have?

Since the beginning of the Digital Age (ca. the 1970s), theoretical physicists have speculated about the possible connection between information and the physical Universe.

Is the universe a computer?

In other words: the universe is a computer and, rather than exist in a solid state, it perpetuates through a series of laws that change over time. How’s it work? That’s the tough part. The researchers explain the universe as a learning system by invoking machine learning systems.

Can we simulate atoms?

Physicists and chemists routinely use computers to simulate how atoms and molecules behave. This makes it even harder to calculate the distribution of these electrons within a molecule. Even today’s most powerful supercomputers can simulate molecules only up to a few hundred atoms.

What would a universe simulating ours be like?

A universe simulating ours used different physics than those in our universe, or contained an active being changing the simulation as it went (rather than being a universe run from first principles, as in the simulations Davoudi builds), the question would become, how much could we figure out about the greater universe from within our own?

How can we prove that we live in a simulation?

Thus, one way to prove that we live in a simulation is to perform an experiment that relies on any given real number being represented in the universe.

What are the limitations of a simulated universe?

A simulated universe could not have any sort of continuous nature. It could not be made of all the real numbers like 0, 0.1, pi, and the square root of 2. It would have to leave some out because even a digital simulation with an infinite number of bits cannot account for all the real numbers.

Can we simulate the universe using quantum computing?

While researchers at Oxford have experimentally shown that the universe cannot be simulated using classical algorithms, it remains to be seen whether more advanced, quantum computing methods could.