arXiv subjects

B. Whitworth

Publications and source records attributed to B. Whitworth.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2012

The Light of Existence

This chapter derives the properties of light from the properties of processing, including its ability to be both a wave and a particle, to respond to objects it doesn't physically touch, to take all paths to a destination, to choose a route after it arrives, and to spin both ways at once as it moves. Here a photon is an entity program spreading as a processing wave of instances. It becomes a "particle" if any part of it overloads the grid network that runs it, causing the photon program to reboot and restart at a new node. The "collapse of the wave function" is how quantum processing creates what we call a physical photon. This informational approach gives insights into issues like the law of least action, entanglement, superposition, counterfactuals, the holographic principle and the measurement problem. The conceptual cost is that physical reality is a quantum processing output, i.e. virtual.

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arXiv2010

Simulating space and time

This chapter asks if a virtual space-time could appear to those within it as our space-time does to us. A processing grid network is proposed to underlie not just matter and energy, but also space and time. The suggested "screen" for our familiar three dimensional world is a hyper-sphere surface simulated by a grid network. Light and matter then travel, or are transmitted, in the "directions" of the grid architecture. The processing sequences of grid nodes create time, as the static states of movies run together emulate events. Yet here what exists are not the static states, but the dynamic processing between them. Quantum collapse is the irreversible event that gives time its direction. In this model, empty space is null processing, directions are node links, time is processing cycles, light is a processing wave, objects are wave tangles and energy is the processing transfer rate. It describes a world where empty space is not empty, space warps, time dilates, and everything began when this virtual universe "booted up".

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arXiv2010

The emergence of the physical world from information processing

This paper links the conjecture that the physical world is a virtual reality to the findings of modern physics. What is usually the subject of science fiction is here proposed as a scientific theory open to empirical evaluation. We know from physics how the world behaves, and from computing how information behaves, so whether the physical world arises from ongoing information processing is a question science can evaluate. A prima facie case for the virtual reality conjecture is presented. If a photon is a pixel on a multi-dimensional grid that gives rise to space, the speed of light could reflect its refresh rate. If mass, charge and energy all arise from processing, the many conservation laws of physics could reduce to a single law of dynamic information conservation. If the universe is a virtual reality, then its big bang creation could be simply when the system was booted up. Deriving core physics from information processing could reconcile relativity and quantum theory, with the former how processing creates the space-time operating system and the latter how it creates energy and matter applications.

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