Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 19:15:52 +0000 From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> To: Tim Vanderhoek <vanderh@ecf.utoronto.ca> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The Ethics of Free Software Message-ID: <20000525191552.B31297@happy.checkpoint.com> In-Reply-To: <20000524222053.A80883@mad>; from vanderh@ecf.utoronto.ca on Wed, May 24, 2000 at 10:20:53PM -0400 References: <20000524205815.A79001@mad> <200005250137.SAA12207@usr05.primenet.com> <20000524222053.A80883@mad>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, May 24, 2000 at 10:20:53PM -0400, Tim Vanderhoek wrote: > The universe must have some mechanism to remember time. Why? > Clearly the > past is different from the present. Does it? And if it does, maybe the difference is merely local? > Or, rephrased, the same question: "Are there a finite or an infinite > number of states in which the universe can be?" > > I know of no evidence that space is quantized. > > This suggests an infinite number of possible states. An infinitely divisible space won't save you because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. To distinguish between two very close positions of a particle, you will have to be at such colossal ignorance about its momentum that there will be no way you could control it. Thus the universe might have an infinite number of possible states but you won't be able to effectively account for them ;) However, there's yet another possibility: a finite number of particles suffices in an expanding universe. You'll be able to store information as distances between particles, and as the distances will grow, your available number of bits will grow. However, the speed of computation will be slowing down all the time, because you'll have to fly throughout your universe back and forth to measure the distance. I vaguely recall an article which talked about implementing a universal Turing machine based on such a scheme, with a finite number of particles. -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20000525191552.B31297>