What if The Universe is Math?
This is the subject of this video by PBS Spacetime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F__elfR3w8c&t=3s
I think PBS Spacetime is one of the best channels for trying to understand physics – excellent graphics and everything well explained. As a subscriber, I have posted this comment there:
Any mathematical equation can be represented as computation, so why not follow Seth Lloyd’s lead in his book Programming the Universe, and treat all of physics as computation? See www.thecosmiccomputer.org. Many Lloyd’s results depend on the Margolus-Levitin theorem which effectively stretches E=mc2 to include information processing, E=mc2=ops/sec, with an exchange rate of about 1051 logic operations per second per kilogram. This means that an electron, with a mass of around 10-31 kg, must continually perform around 1020 ops/sec – more than all the computers so far built by humans combined! This internal processing of an electron is mostly quantum NOT operations, and its effects are hidden from the outer world by the uncertainty principle, but the frequency of these logic operations is the same as the electron’s ‘trembling motion’, or zitterbewegung as Schrödinger called it. Roger Penrose describes zitterbewegung as a continual flipping of the electron between a zig and zag version of itself, each traveling at light speed but in opposite directions so that the electron can appear to stand still. In his paper The Zitterbewegung Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, David Hestenes showed that all of quantum mechanics can be seen to arise from the properties of an electron and its zitter, he also agrees that the ‘zit’, as he calls it, is the fundamental unit of the Cosmic Computer. Oliver Consa has shown that the math of the Lorentz transformations of special relativity arises quite simply from the interplay between rotational and linear motions in an electron’s zitter dance. And all of this comes from the miraculous Dirac equation!
My recent book The Cosmic Computer (available as free pdf at www.thecosmiccomputer.org or as a paperback from Amazon), incorporates ideas from The Perennial Philosophy, the consensus of all spiritual and mystic belief, to show that a remarkable simplification of physics is possible, and many mysteries of physics can start to make sense. The book may also be seen as an update of David Bohm’s holistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. The main idea is that information in the Universe is divided into two domains that are separated at the scale of atoms, and zitterbewegung is part of the continual dialogue between inner and outer domains. The domains are dual to each other, but encode information in distinct forms that are Fourier dual to each other. The conjugate quantities of quantum mechanics obey the same math that is used in every smartphone, and that much of DSP depends on: the Fourier transform. Physics needs more input from experts in digital signal processing and quantum computation to make progress. There is more at www.thecosmiccomputer.org.