Re: How many bits are necessary to store the universe?

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Article #8817

#8817

From: Anton Vredegoor
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 15:01

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Eliot Coweye wrote:
> Just in case I want to program my own universe or digitize the existing
> universe on a computer, how many bits do I need to create a working
> universe?

That depends on whether the universe repeats itself. For example if the
universe looks like 3.3333333 it would be possible to store it as one
digit and the number of decimals. On the other hand if it would look
like PI there would be no way of storing all of it in a finite number
of bits.

Some time ago there was an article in scientific american about
repeating universes. One idea was that there could be only a limited
amount of info in a certain volume and the total volume of the universe
could be bigger than "the number of possible states a volume can be in"
multiplied by "the amount of space a single volume occupies".

Anton

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From: "Anton Vredegoor" <anton.vredegoor@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics,brasil.unix
Subject: Re: How many bits are necessary to store the universe?
Date: 13 Nov 2005 07:01:35 -0800
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