Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 8

I believe this board is the best place, of all the places to go in the world, for sharing information about a theory I have. I believe the theory I have is what Stephen Wolfram calls 'the ultimate pattern' and which would fall into the category of 'theory of everything' being equivalent to a 'unified field theory'. It has been 3 years since I first became aware of this and it is only now I think I am ready to talk about it. I'm pretty sure that if there is going to a theory of everything, this will be it. The conclusions drawn from the theory are:

- The universe is a spatially infinite and eternally existing cellular automaton.

- The parameters of this cellular automaton are the foundation for all physical rules in the universe.

- The details of this cellular automaton are the ultimate pattern/theory of everything.

What did surprise me is that Stephen Wolfram, a brilliant scientist and philosopher, did not include the implementation I am presenting is in his amazing study of the cellular automata phenomena. I am sure he would have been interested and looked at it further had he come across it. I think I can see to some degree why he missed it, his abstractions, developed with ruthless pragmatism, would not have included the 'odd' details of this implementation. I say its odd because it really is unique and there is not an equivalent implementation, its definition is quite specific and implies limits on variations of it plus its completely symmetric so an inverse definition would be the same as the original.

I am not the first person to suggest that the universe might be a cellular automaton, but I might be the first to suggest an actual implementation. It does challenge some of the accepted truths in physics, but at the same time it embraces plenty of them too. I am not concerned by any of that at this stage, it only challenges conclusions drawn rather than the science itself which by its own admission is incomplete. I am not asking people to accept what I am saying, the reason I am approaching this board is for some advice and guidance. I have reached the limits of my current resources and skill set, I am hoping that what I have so far will raise enough interest to encourage others to spend a little time pointing me in some sort of direction.

From this presentation it should be clear enough that this very simple cellular automata has a surprising amount of features that are worth looking into further.

The advice I am looking for is 'how' to look into it further. I've posted this introduction first and will post some more, so each post is like a small chapter. Some of the reason is to force me to share it rather than endlessly worrying about what sort of response I will get and not doing so. I realise I am in 'nutter' territory however everything I am putting forward is quite reasonable, if not intuitive. The following posts will be:

Space, Time and Possible States - A simple framework for a universe.

Bodies and Movement - Examining simple bodies and their implied behavior.

Mass and Forces - Complex interactions involving multiple bodies.

It probably wont get exciting until the 'Bodies and Movement' section but then you should start seeing some interesting stuff, I will touch on some of this interesting stuff in the 'Space, Time and Possible States' section. Anyhow, I'm going to post that section over the weekend, its mostly written now.

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Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 13

Your idea sounds interesting and you seem to have put a lot of thought into it. However in the book Stephen specifically states that the universe is most likely not a cellular automaton. The reason for this is that a cellular automaton has too much built in structure and is actually too complicated in that it would make a distinction between the universe and its contents.

Much more likely is a model of the universe as network substitution model (NSM). This type of computational system has no built in structure and has already been shown to reproduce some of the simpler aspects of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Here are some excerpts from the book that describe some of these points.
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-474-text
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-486-text
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1026b-text

Chapter nine would be the best place to look for more information about this. It may be helpful to read the book (esspecially that chapter) and see if you can adapt your ideas to the idea of a NSM. I think you might find that you'll be able to make more progress with your hypothesis because of the power and simplicity of the NSM.

Good Luck!

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Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 8

Thanks for the post Sean, in my next post I was going to mention that Stephen Wolfram discounts the idea that the universe might be a cellular automata and that he believes it is more likely that it might be an NSM. Im afraid I dont totally agree with that quite at the moment although as I move further forward it is something I maybe looking at.

When I first came up with the idea I actually called it a 'tile based world' rather than a cellular automaton however after discovering Stephen Wolfram I realised cellular automaton was more appropriate. The point I am trying to make is that I came to my idea from a different angle than Stephen Wolfram and I believed firstly that the universe was a cellular automaton then looked for the pattern, which came fairly quickly.

I was reading about Liebnez's identity of indiscernibles principle at the time the idea clicked, what I must do is review the work and try to give some insight into what clicked. At present I will put this down as something that needs to be discussed however it is still neccessary for me to study the implementation I have before moving on.

Further more this implementation 'requires' certain features of a cellular automaton, in particular the cells 'must' change in parallel for it to work, as I hope you will see. Anyhow Im going to post the second stage in the next couple of hours so you can have a look at what I mean. Thanks again for the response.

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