Friday, August 17, 2007

Are You Real?

I recently came across an article in ‘The Times of India’ in which a scientist claimed that there is 20% chance of us being virtual creations of ‘post-humans’. He says that it is very likely that our world is imaginary, created by highly intelligent machines or humans just like in the movie ‘The Matrix’ except that we might not even have a real body: we might be like the computer characters of the popular game ‘The Sims’.
By 2050, processing power is expected to reach a stage where micro-universes could be created and we may create our own little worlds. And if we are inside a virtual world, then our virtual worlds would be inside ours’. So the possibility arises that we might be in a universe inside a series of infinite universes!
According to the string theory, existence of real parallel universes has already been proved. So now we have Infinite Real Universes + Infinite Virtual Universes. And any child can tell you, infinite + infinite = infinite :P
If you find this disturbing, then I hope the counter theories worked out by me will buy you some peace.
Let us apply the rule of conservation of energy (pray that this holds) to the above model. If there is a possibility of infinite virtual worlds, one contained in another, each virtual world will require more or less same amount of computing power to run their universes. Since the universes themselves are infinite, infinite amount of computing power is required. And infinite computing power equals infinite energy, which doesn’t exist and can’t be supplies all at once.
Infinity to me is a purely theoretical concept because nothing in this world is actually infinite. The speed is limited to c. Theoretically the distance between two points can be infinitely divided; then how does a person get from one point to another? The answer is that the size of matter is limited (to strings, as far as we know now). Time too has the smallest unit—plank time.
Taking these facts into account and assuming that the universe should ideally be harmonious, I think that the possibility of universes wrapped infinitely is faint.