Theoretical Computer.

Question

Is it possible for a computer (inside or outside of the Universe) to be so powerful as to simulate everything in the Universe?

Answer 1

What the other answerers misunderstand, is that it would not be necessary to simulate the entire universe. Only that bit that is actually being observed. Just like a video game doesn't simulate the entire playing environment all the time, but only those parts which the characters are currently interacting with.

There is a field of pseudo-scientific study called "Singularitarianism" which deals with what will happen when computers become more intelligent than us. They predict that such a computer will be a reality within 25 years. After that it is impossible to predict what an intelligence greater than our own will be capable of.

There is no way to know if we are already living in a computer simulation. There is no way to know if what you see is real, or just a simulation.

Answer 2

no. they have limitations. even the most powerful one.

Answer 3

A computer cannot, of course, simulate the universe within which it is situated. This is because it would have to simulate itself _and_ everything else, which means its computational capacity would have to exceed its own computational capacity - clearly an impossibility.

Could we invent a computer which could simulate a universe of comparable size and complexity to our own? I am certain that we can't. The interactions between even the tiniest bits of matter, elementary particles, are so complex that attempts to simulate them with traditional computing machines have met with hopeless failure (well, you can simulate a few femtoseconds of molecular motion using about 10 minutes of supercomputer time...). Have you noticed that nature solves its own equations automatically? This suggests that the smallest thing that can be used to simulate a system, is at least as large as the system itself. Keep in mind that we'd also have to store a very large quantity of data - think about how much space that would take up. So, we would need a computer larger than the universe to simulate a universe of the same size. Furthermore, we couldn't get it done at any reasonable speed even if we had a computer that large, because information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light (as far as I know).

One thing for sure is that unlimited recursion is not possible - we cannot have a machine simulating a universe of the same size in which there is a computer of the same power, which is simulating a universe of the same size, and so on for an unlimited number of layers. Hence, the idea that we are almost certainly living in a simulation, is based on a faulty premise.

Answer 4

Nearly anything you can imagine is possible, and several things you can't yet imagine.  Yes - a computer one day, maybe 10,000 years from now, will be able to simulate a universe.

By 2030, an off the shelf computer will match human intelligence, and very soon after, reach the intelligence of the entire human race combined.

So, is it possible?  Absolutely.  The question is - how soon?

Answer 5

This is a very complex quetion becuase not only do you need the computing power, you also need to fully understand what governs the universe. Since it seems that there are aspects in the universe that are random you would need to have someway to actually randomly generate numebrs. But to perfectly simulate the universe you would need infinite precision, since the universe does not work according to "numbers" created by us. For instance every distance, speed, mass, everything would have to be accurate to an infinite decimal place.

Answer: With conventional computing this is impossible because, even though computing power grows exponentially, it will not reach infinity. We would need a new type of computer capable of infinite precision.

Answer 6

They have limitations, but I think that it is possible for a computer to simulate the entire universe, but I don't think it exists or will ever exist.

Actually, I've heard some theories that some people think that we're just very advanced simulations lol but I don't believe that either...