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A simulation represents something else, so a model of the Empire State building simulates it. An information simulation is a virtual reality that represents events in time, like a simulation of the weather. Such simulations can answer a question, like what will the weather be like tomorrow? They can also help to learn skills, as pilots use flight simulators to learn about a new plane before actually flying it. A third use is to give observer experiences, as computer games like SimCity let people experience the challenge of building a city. In every case, the benefit of the simulation lies not in itself but for its creator.

The simulation hypothesis is that our physical reality is a representation so realistic that its participants are unaware that they are living in a simulation. In the film The Matrix, Morpheus says:

“What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

In this film, machines in future earth simulate New York in 1999 to humans in vats, by feeding appropriate electrical impulses to their brains. They don’t know that the virtual world they live in is fake or that real-world machines are using them as batteries. The key assumption of this science fiction story is that computers in the real physical world can simulate a false virtual reality.

Since it might take a physical computer bigger than our universe to simulate even a part of it, the simulation hypothesis expects processing costs to be critical. It follows that there is no need to actually simulate the details of an uninhabited far-off galaxy if it is only ever seen as a dot of light. It takes less processing to fake it and this logic applies to everything we can’t directly verify, like the past and the quantum world. The simulation hypothesis implies a virtual world with a:

• • Fake history. Why simulate the 14 billion years before we arrived to see it?
  • Fake cosmos. Why simulate galaxies and stars that we can never travel to?
  • Fake quantum theory. Why simulate quantum events that we can’t observe?

The godlike designers of the simulation only have to make it appear real, as movies do, so there should be anomalies that prove it is just a simulation. Assuming the reality we see is a fake, simulation supporters base their case on finding flaws in the simulation.

For example, quantum theory uses physically impossible quantum events predict to physical effects so simulation theory expects to find flaws in its predictions (Campbell, Owhadi, Sauvageau, & Watkinson, 2017), but as critics have been trying to disprove quantum theory for over a hundred years, this is unlikely to succeed. Even if it did, finding a quantum theory fault would just result in it being revised, because theories don’t succeed in science by falsifying others. Simulation theory has to predict positive results that quantum theory doesn’t, which it doesn’t do.

The key simulation hypothesis premise is that what generates physical events is also physical but quantum Hall research shows that classical processing complexity increases exponentially with the number of particles. It turns out that to simulate just a few hundred electrons requires more physical atoms than the universe has, let alone simulating New York city. If a universe that behaves as quantum theory says can’t be physically computed, we aren’t living in a computer simulation.

If the simulation hypothesis that our reality is a computer-generated simulation is impossible, that machines, aliens, or our future-selves are simulating our reality from another physical world isn’t possible either. The “other” of virtualism can’t have a physical base, either as programs that need physical hardware, information that needs the same or dreams that need a physical brain, but it could be quantum based.

Quantum processing increases exponentially with the number of processors, so it can scale to handle a physical reality whose demands also scale with size. If the physical world is a simulation, it must simulate something but in quantum realism, there is no physical world and there never was. It is a virtual reality never seen before not a simulation of what already exists. What creates a virtual reality doesn’t need it to exist, so quantum reality doesn’t need a physical base to do what it does.

In quantum realism, processing cost isn’t an issue because quantum reality is always active, so the physical world isn’t fake as simulation theory says. The virtual reality generated by quantum reality has no holes, so every second of the past fourteen billion years happened, every far-away galaxy we see in our telescopes exists and everything quantum theory describes is literally true.

Our universe is a virtual reality on a scale we can barely imagine, for a reason we have almost no awareness of, any more than the billions of animals that lived and died in biological history had any idea that they were part of an evolution. If the universe was born to evolve, everything it has produced since its birth, from matter to life, has been by some form of evolution. Evolution is what our universe is all about, but what is it?

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Since time immemorial, people have wondered why does the universe exist? The answer varies depending on what you think the universe is. If you think the universe is objectively real, then either it was made so for a purpose, or it is just here because it is. But if it has a purpose, why is it mainly empty space? Or if it just is, how did it come into existence from nothing as the big bang implies?

In contrast, virtualism suggests that the physical universe doesn’t exist by itself at all but is a virtual reality run by some “other” outside itself.  The most well-known version of this view today is the simulation hypothesis popularized by the Matrix movie.

QR5.7.1. The Simulation Hypothesis

QR5.7.2. What Is Evolution?

QR5.7.3. Why Do Virtual Realities Exist?

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In physics, whether the universe will expand forever or contract back into a big crunch depends on how space is curved overall. Relativity lets space curve but doesn’t define how it curves. In mathematics, a positively curved space will eventually stop expanding and contract in a big crunch but a negatively curve space will expand faster and faster forever, as there isn’t enough mass to stop it. A positive or flat curve was expected until cosmology found that the expansion of space is accelerating not slowing down (Cowen, 2013), so space is negatively curved.

Quantum realism expects our space as the inner surface of an expanding hyper-bubble to have the slight negative curve that cosmology found, but doesn’t conclude that it will expand forever. If our universe is an expanding bubble in a quantum bulk, there are probably others so they will eventually meet. What happens when one “pocket universe” as Guth calls them meets another?

The answer depends on whether they are matter or anti-matter. If our universe meets another matter universe, they will just merge into a bigger bubble. If this has already happened, our universe will be bigger than it could be by its own expansion, but there is also the Armageddon option, that it meets an anti-matter universe.

Gravity is all powerful in our universe because it only adds so nothing opposes it. One can block an electric field with an opposite field but nothing opposes gravity. It reigns supreme because our universe took the matter path but matter has an anti-matter opposite that could not only shield gravity but would also fall up on earth. If our matter universe meets an anti-matter universe, both will annihilate back into the quantum bulk, to return from whence they came.

If Armageddon has already begun, we won’t know right away because it will happen at light speed. Cosmology estimates that our galaxy is over 100,000 light years across and the observable universe is 90 billion light years across so it could take a while to shut-down. Will our telescopes see it coming? There would be no signs, as we see galaxies as they were millions of years ago. When our physical universe is packed away, it will be at the speed of light with no possible warning.

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The quantum law of all action causing the second law of thermodynamics also lets evolution select from unlikely combinations because everything that can occur eventually does, but what drives evolution isn’t probability but stability. It is unlikely that two extreme light rays will meet exactly head-on but when it did, the matter result was stable. A very unlikely event created it so matter exists because it was stable not probable. The quantum law that destroys order also finds unlikely combinations that survive. A lead atom is 82 protons, 125 neutrons and 82 electrons that shouldn’t naturally combine, but they did, and the reason is evolution. Lead, with a half-life of millions of years, is an order that exists not because it is probable but because it is stable.

The quantum law of all action underlies both evolution and devolution, so one can’t have one without the other. They work differently, as devolution creates the probable and evolution creates the possible, but both have the same quantum cause. The second law generally decreases order but evolution locally increases it, as when an electron and a proton form a hydrogen atom, they move together instead of both being free, so system order has increased. While the fridge needs a constant energy input to stay colder than its surroundings, the order of an atom doesn’t need a constant energy supply. When matter entities combine into a new stable entity, order increases permanently.

Hydrogen evolving into higher elements is an anti-entropy process that shouldn’t be common because the second law requires energy to create order, but it is. It occurs constantly in all the stars we see and led to the evolution of higher elements. Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms then combined into stable water molecules leading eventually to the self-replicating proteins that allowed primitive cells to evolve. The evolution of matter opposes the second law of thermodynamics by constantly increasing order in a way that doesn’t require any further energy.

Evolution didn’t stop there, as over time, primitive archaea and bacteria cells combined into the modern cells (Lane, 2015) that led to plants, animals and us. The evolution of life was a new combination that did need an energy input to survive but because it reproduces, it is also a permanent increase in order. In general, evolution acts to increase local order in a permanent way at the same time that the second law of thermodynamics is decreasing order generally. These two processes are not in opposition because they both derive from the quantum law of all action.

The social version of the second law is Murphy’s law, that if anything can go wrong, it will, but its opposite is Adam’s law, that from bad, good can come. Physics has no counter to the second law so it predicts inevitable disorder but evolution is the universal anti-entropy principle it ignores.

If evolution was limited to biology, the second law might supremely decide the universe but if matter evolved as life did, evolution is as universal as the second law. The second law predicts a universe devolving into disorder but evolution predicts it is also evolving order. An unstoppable quantum reality is constantly shaking the universe to possibly evolve even as it probably decays.

Evolution was built into our universe from its inception. The grand evolution of matter and life going on all around us defines the universe as much as physics based on heat flows. The dismal fact that the universe is dying doesn’t deny that it is also evolving, and we are the proof. Evolution explains what the second law cannot, that we are here because ordered life evolved.

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The opposite of entropy is order that maintains an unlikely state, like an unbroken egg. The tendency to disorder is apparent, but why then is there order all around us? Not only are we highly ordered, but so is the entire web of life around us, based on the order of day and night, seasonal cycles, and weather that self-adjusts to maintain an environment that sustains life.

Given this fact, is our earth just a local anomaly, a random accident that bucks the universal trend to disorder? For example, a fridge that keeps beer cold on a hot day doesn’t contradict the second law because it inputs energy from electrical power, and our earth has the sun to power it. But the earth isn’t the only planet that orbits a star, they all do, so its situation may be fortunate but it isn’t unusual. And its order depends on the order above it. Life couldn’t have evolved on earth if the sun didn’t keep its planets in order, and it can only do that if the galaxy keeps its stars in order. The order on earth then derives from a cosmic order, so it isn’t a local anomaly.

But if so, the universe after the big bang must have been highly ordered, and is now only half-way through its devolution, so life is still possible:

“The ultimate source of order, of low entropy, must be the big bang itself. … The egg splatters rather than unsplatters because it is … the drive toward higher entropy … initiated by the extraordinarily low entropy state with which the universe began.” (Greene, 2004), p173-174.

In this reverse logic, the universe had to begin very ordered because the second law is true, but that the initial chaos was a very ordered state makes no sense at all.

The fact is that we see order all around us, such as:

1. Galaxies. Nearly all stars in galaxies orbit the same way, as any star orbiting another way eventually hits other stars and either leaves the galaxy or is turned around. The common orbit direction of galaxies is an observed order that arises because it is stable.

2. Solar systems. The planets in a solar system eventually adopt orbits that don’t interact. Any exceptions again result in catastrophic events until the system again adopts an observed order that is stable.

3. Atoms. Hydrogen atoms evolved because electrons and protons together are more stable than either alone, again an observed order.

4. Elements. The periodic table elements exist because unlikely combinations of electrons, protons and neutrons survived. A lead atom is again an observed order that is stable.

5. Molecules. Atoms combine into ordered molecules if they again are stable.

It follows that order evolves if it is stable and life is another example. Life isn’t just any old order but a self-replicating one that might even spread between planets. Panspermia is the theory that bacteria can hitch a ride on an asteroid, meteor or comet to travel between planets. It is possible because bacteria in boxes placed outside the International Space Station for a year came back to life when they returned to earth. Under harsh conditions, some bacteria form spores that are dead metabolically but revive under the right conditions, even after millions of years. If life can evolve on one planet and spread to another, bacteria from Mars may have colonized Earth and millions of planets in our galaxy may have some form of life thanks to bacterial colonists. A galaxy teeming with life isn’t what the second law predicts after 14 billion years of decay!

It is now suggested that order is all around us, in nature and the cosmos, because evolution can create order.

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The second law of thermodynamics explains what the first law can’t, why events that are in theory reversible, in practice might not be. For example, running a video of the earth orbiting the sun looks the same to us, but playing a video of an egg breaking in reverse evokes laughter. By the first law, the events of egg breaking are just as reversible as the earth’s orbit, but common sense tells us it doesn’t happen. The second law states that the disorder of every isolated  system increases or stays constant, so eggs can break but not unbreak.

Entropy is the concept physics uses to describe disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. Boltzmann defined it as the number of possible microscopic states, of atoms or molecules, that produce a macroscopic state, and that definition is used here. For example, when a colored gas injected into an empty bottle spreads, entropy is said to increase. Initially, when the gas molecules are concentrated, entropy is low because the number of molecule combinations that allow it is low. Of all the molecule combinations, far more support the spread-out state, so it has a higher entropy. The gas then spreads to increase entropy because more micro-state combinations support it.

In general, entropy increases as disorder increases (Figure 5.18). Yet while the gas in the bottle will probably spread over time, its molecules could all by chance move back to the top, but that is unlikely. The second law is based probability, so it’s a statistical law, not a causal law. It isn’t that objects must become more disordered, but that in a constantly changing world, they probably will. Disorder therefore prevails because it is more probable.

The second law is then universal because our world is like a bottle being constantly shaken, so its contents tend to disperse. As Heraclitus observed thousands of years ago, our world is a constant flux that always changes from one moment to the next. The quantum principle behind the Heraclitean flux is the quantum law of all action (3.6.3), that quantum reality always tries every option, so this law underlies the second law of thermodynamics.

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We say that energy isn’t created or destroyed when we see it take other forms. For example, when a car slows down due to road friction, its tires become hot and radiate heat, so kinetic energy is being converted into heat energy. Conversely, a steam engine essentially converts heat energy into kinetic energy. Energy then is seen to take different forms, but with one notable exception.

Lifting an object takes energy that dropping it releases, but where does it go to or come from? There is no heat or radiation, so it is said to have potential energy based on its position in a gravitational field. This balances the energy books, to conserve energy, but where is potential energy stored?

For example, if a rocket blasts off into an earth orbit, where did the liftoff energy go? If it then floats off into space, where is that energy stored when it leaves our solar system? Or if it crashes into a big planet like Jupiter, to release more energy than it took to leave earth, where did the extra energy come from? The current answer, that gravity gives and takes potential energy, is a theory about an unknown mechanism that lets energy be conserved when apparently, it isn’t.

In this model, energy is the transfer of processing that occurs when quantum waves spread. Light then has radiant energy because it spreads, and high frequencies that spread more processing have more energy. Heat energy is also radiant energy, but of a lower frequency. Radiant energy is then conserved because photons are never destroyed, but just restart, as processing can. If every physical event restarts photons in various forms, as light or matter, photons are always conserved. 

When light shining on a solar sail makes it move, radiant energy is converted into kinetic energy. If the sail moves because it acquires photons that bias its distribution, kinetic energy is also based on photons. When objects collide in empty space, kinetic energy is conserved because directional photons are exchanged, but their number is constant. Nuclear energy from matter seems different, but if matter arose from light, it is also based on photons.

What then is potential energy? Potential energy is based on gravity, which as Einstein deduced isn’t a force at all, so no energy is involved.  When a rocket leaves earth, no photons are lost, and if it crashes on Jupiter, no photons are created, so the conservation of photons avoids the fudge of potential energy.

Current physics conserves matter, charge, momentum, isospin, quark flavor and color, but each law is partial, as matter isn’t conserved in nuclear reactions, and quark flavor isn’t conserved in weak interactions. Energy is then the same, a partial law, because it can’t explain potential energy or the loss of energy due to the expansion of space.  

Yet if photons are universally conserved not energy, how does the expansion of space affect this law? The answer is not at all. If our universe began with the creation of light, in what physics calls inflation, which was healed by the expansion of space, the number of photons that exist has stayed constant since then, at a finite number. Expanding space changed the energy of the universe but not the total number of photons in it.

Our universe then conserves only photons, not matter, energy, or anything else, because it arose entirely from light, and nothing but light. What then does the second law mean?

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The concept of order arose from thermodynamics, which began as the study of heat in machines like steam engines, to increase their efficiency. It was observed that the total energy was constant, which was the first law of thermodynamics, and that energy always flows from hot to cold, which was the second law. It follows that if our universe is a closed system, it will have a constant energy that constantly disperses.

The second law of thermodynamics then predicts that everything in our universe will disperse, until there is maybe one atom per cubic light year, in a big freeze that will last forever, so:

“… eventually all these over densities will be ironed out and the Universe will be left featureless and lifeless forever, it seems” (Barrow, 2007), p191.

The problem with this prediction is that by the big bang, our universe wasn’t always big. It is now thought that it was once about the size of a tennis ball, then expanded into what it is today. But by thermodynamics, expanding a system requires energy, and blowing up a balloon cools the gas inside it. It follows that our universe isn’t a closed system because it needs energy to expand.

The cooling effect of this expanding is shown by cosmic microwave background, which was once white hot but is now freezing cold. If space is expanding everywhere, every photon now has a slightly longer wavelength than a moment ago, and so less energy than before. Expanding space took its energy and didn’t give it back, so the total energy of the universe must reduce, because expanding takes energy.

Does this then deny the thermodynamic principle of conservation of energy? Not necessarily because if our universe isn’t a closed system, it doesn’t apply. But it does suggest a closer examination of that principle, so on what facts is the principle of conservation of energy based? 

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The second law of thermodynamics is that every closed physical system tends to increase its entropy, the technical term for disorder. If our universe is a closed system, then disorder should constantly increase but according to Strogatz, this doesn’t explain what we see today:

“Scientists have often been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe. The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings—that have all somehow managed to assemble themselves.” (Strogatz, 2003).

If our universe is constantly increasing disorder, how did fourteen billion years of degeneration produce the order around us today? That is like waking up in a warm bed with an electric blanket and being told that humans have been in constant decline since they lived in caves. It doesn’t make sense, so either the second law is wrong or some other universal law is opposing it.

QR5.6.1. Is Energy Conserved?

QR5.6.2. The Universal Conservation

QR5.6.3. Disorder is Probable

QR5.6.4. Order is Possible

QR5.6.5. Evolution Creates Order

QR5.6.6. How Will The Universe End?

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The unification of the fields of gravity, electricity, and magnetism has long been a dream of physics. The electro-magnetic field united the latter but gravity resisted, and the new fields of the standard model made it seem unlikely that one field could create dozens of particles.

But if the strong, weak, and Higgs fields are unnecessary inventions (4.5.3), the fields to be unified reduce to three again, which the last module attributed to one cause. This cause could be called the gravito-electro-magnetic field, but the quantum field is simpler.

What is the quantum field? In simple terms, it is the quantum wave values that quantum theory uses to explain photons and electrons. Schrödinger’s equation describes how these waves spread but not why they collapse and restart at a point when a physical event occurs. This model explains that they are processing waves that restart when they overload the network they spread on. The same process that explains the quantum waves of light then also explain matter (4.5.8), as quantum waves constantly restarting in a standing wave. This allows matter to have three distinct aspects:

1. Mass. The net processing result from +1 to -1 in one or more dimensions.

2. Charge. The net processing remainder from +1 to -1 in one or more dimensions.

3. Spin. The processing spin direction, which can be up or down.

One field, the quantum field, then produces space, light, and matter according to the values it takes. When the quantum field takes null values, we see empty space, but if it takes the values mass +1 and charge -1, we see an electron. Quantum waves always spread, so matter creates a distribution, like ripples spreading in a bucket (Figure 5.15), that alters the quantum field around it because quantum waves superpose. 

In Figure 5.16, gravity, charge, and magnetism move objects by biasing the quantum field around them. On the left is matter, whose mass, charge, and magnetism affect the distribution it spreads into the quantum field around it. 

On the right, is the quantum field that mediates the effects of mass, charge, and magnetism. A large mass creates a gravity field that increases the strength of the quantum field closer to it. Charges create electrical fields that speed up or slow down the quantum field between them, when they cancel or add. Magnets create magnetic fields that also speed up or slow down the quantum field between them, when spins make space deeper or shallower. 

The effect in all cases is that matter moves because biasing the strength or speed of the quantum field around it makes it restart more often one way, as even a small bias will give movement in our time. 

The fields of physics then move matter by biasing its natural tremble, not by invoking particles from nowhere to push it. When the quantum field around a matter entity becomes stronger or faster in one direction, it restarts more often that way, so it moves in our terms. Gravitational fields bias the field strength around matter, electrical fields bias the field speed between charges, and magnetic fields do the same between magnets. All these fields are based on only one field, the quantum field.

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