22 ms·

Faster Than Light in Our Model of Physics: Some Preliminary Thoughts

103 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

m4r35n357 6y ago
If it is just an "engineering" problem, then what sort of engineering is required? Are there any real scientists on this, or is it just a well funded crank site?
btilly 6y ago
In other words, "If you believe my unproven theory of physics, and also had access to an unavailable amount of computing power, there might be a way to go faster than light." Most scientists take a full stop at "my unproven theory of physics". He has yet to come up with testable predictions. Let alone trying to test them. Only then there might be a point in listening to the rest. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-criticize-stephen-wolframs-theory-of-everything/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-critic... for more.
- naringas 6y ago
  might it be a mathematical (and unphysical) theory??
  - ianai 6y ago
    Or call it a mathematical model. It’s possible to work within a model and establish truths that follow within it as verifiably true assuming the conditions of the model. That’s actually a pretty interesting way to work in mathematics - ie whether you’re adding the point at infinity in complex analysis or not makes the topology similar to a sphere or plane, respectively.
    - dfischer 6y ago
      Most of physics is a mathematical model. Stephen Wolfram is creating computational models. It’s a natural evolution of reasoning about the universe with the potential to ask if the structure of the universe is computational itself.
- uoaei 6y ago
  Theory exists independently from any necessity to verify it, per se. I don't think he's ever said anything like "this is a theory that can be used to predict the dynamics of material reality".
  - 8bitsrule 6y ago
    Hypotheses, conjectures, speculations (however baroque) exist independently. The question is: what is needed for them to become 'theories' in math or science. A basic test is comparison to agreed-on facts. Prediction is considered to be a strong test because it uncovers -new- facts. Else: what's the point?
- BluSyn 6y ago
  > Most scientists take a full stop at "my unproven theory of physics" Not convinced that's true. Considering how many physicists still keep talking about String Theory, even though it hasn't produced a single testable prediction after 30+ years.
  - btilly 6y ago
    You have a point. String theorists did go off of a deep end. But most scientists did not follow them down that course.
  - djaque 6y ago
    > hasn't produced a single testable prediction after 30+ years Not completely true. It is able model some aspects of quark gluon plasma. [1] Not a high energy theorist myself, but this is the retort some of my friends would give. It also is well motivated by an entire human history's worth of experimental data which any new theory needs to reproduce. Wolfram fails even to show that this is the case for his work. Note: I'm also not a "true believer" of string theory, but comparing it to Wolfram isn't fair. > Not convinced that's true. Besides making a point about string theory, do you really have a reason to believe that? I know many high energy physics folks myself and work with some of them. I have never met someone that does this professionally that has given Wolfram's theories a second thought. [1] https://www.bnl.gov/rhic/news/091107/story2.asp https://www.bnl.gov/rhic/news/091107/story2.asp
- A_No_Name_Mouse 6y ago
  > He has yet to come up with testable predictions. Let alone trying to test them. Only then there might be a point in listening to the rest. He is not presenting this as a scientific theory. This is a keynote speech for NASA folks. Just like science fiction is not science, it may still inspire scientists and be worth listening to IMHO.
photonic34 6y ago
> To give a preview of why doing this might devolve into an “engineering problem”, let’s consider a loose (but, in the end, not quite so loose) analogy. Imagine you’ve got molecules of gas in a room, all bouncing around and colliding with each other. Now imagine there’s a special molecule—or even a tiny speck of dust or a virus particle—somewhere in the room. Normally the special molecule will be buffeted by the molecules in the air, and will move in some kind of random walk, gradually diffusing across the room. But imagine that the special molecule somehow knows enough about the motion of the air molecules that it can compute exactly where to go to avoid being buffeted. Then that special molecule can travel much faster than diffusion—and effectively make a beeline from one side of the room to the other. Of course this requires more knowledge and more computation than we currently imagine something like a molecule can muster (though it’s not clear this is true when we start thinking about explicitly constructing molecule-scale computers). But the point is that the limit on the speed of the molecule is less a question of what’s physically possible, and more a question of what’s “engineerable”. This is posed as a computational resource problem, but it strikes me as an information problem. How do you know where the aggressor molecules are and what their paths (i.e. future states) are? Perhaps it’s possible to know the very local conditions and dodge an imminent collision, but does that generalize to arbitrarily long paths? Can I make it to the other end of the room, dodging only the molecules right in front of me? Or can I set out on a path from the beginning that has no solution in the end because it results in an unsolvable state? And if the only way to know is to know the full state of the molecules that may affect my journey, beginning to end, doesn’t their state have to be known at the outset of the journey? If the information about their state itself has a speed limit, and if their state is not fully observable or fully deterministic, what sort of computation can defeat that?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  More, it betrays a very simplistic view of physics. How does the special molecule move? By magic? By willpower? By an internal combustion engine? It needs some way of changing its course. Molecules don't have such a mechanism, except for bouncing off of other molecules. And, how does the molecule know where the other molecules are? It's psychic? Lidar? Radar? How? What's it's energy source for emitting whatever it has to emit to be able to gather the information that it needs? The analogy is, if we take a superficial knowledge of physics, and don't actually think about the details, we can construct a wonderful-sounding-but-not-actually-possible scenario. That's perhaps an accurate analogy for what Wolfram is really proposing.
stephc_int13 6y ago
"Most scientists take a full stop at "my unproven theory of physics". He has yet to come up with testable predictions. Let alone trying to test them. Only then there might be a point in listening to the rest." This is dumb. Einstein's theories were not proven overnight and many were skepticals at the time.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  However, Einstein's theories did make testable predictions.
  - stephc_int13 6y ago
    It wasn't obvious at the time.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Let's see. Einstein published his general relativity paper in 1915. One of the things it explained was the precesion of Mercury, but that was already known - it wasn't a prediction or a test. When was the observation of the sun bending starlight during a solar eclipse? 1919 - and Einstein proposed the test. He found ways to test the predictions rather quickly.
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  Einstein's theories were based on existing experimental results. In fact for Special Relativity he merely stated what must be true for the Michaelson-Morley experiment to fail to show any speed difference with respect to the ether. Lorentz and other physicists had already derived a set of equations(called Lorentz transformations) that must be true given the experimental failure. But they considered it unthinkable that the speed of light could be constant in all inertial reference frames, so they thought those equations were wrong or that there was something they were missing. The only thing Einstein did in that situation was come in and say "hey what if that unthinkable thing were actually true?" Contrast this with Wolfram's article, where he's postulating the existence of an entire kind of physics without any experimental or phenomenological basis. The comparison is without any basis.
WJW 6y ago
A very Stephen Wolfram article. As usual, if you assume all his unproven priors (ie, reality is actually a hypergraph with well defined update rules, the hypergraph has premade nonlocal 'long threads' in it) and go along with his redefinition of the speed of light as the speed of causality then the article makes perfect sense. Where the trouble starts is that there seems to be no evidence whatsoever to support the axioms, and also no way to actually measure the predicted effects. It is not so different from saying "There might be a godlike being out there that can just teleport us anywhere we want, but we have no way of contacting it or even of being sure it exists". A cool theory, but until any proofs or falsifications come along it is indistinguishable from science fiction.
- prionassembly 6y ago
  I think he's content with this reputation; also independently wealthy and not taking public funds or seats in academia. I say the future generations will be better off for Wolfram having gone down his rabbit holes.
  - mnemonicsloth 6y ago
    Right. Except for all the times he's claimed credit for others' work. And his wikipedia page has been thoroughly whitewashed, which suggests he is not content with the reputation he deserves.
- czbond 6y ago
  But is still worth noting. Science tends to be pretty rigid, and often dismissive of outlandish theories because participants in the field are too close to 'socially accepted facts'. Which as we know from human existence - humans have small minds due to social conformity.....
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    It's not worth noting - because we also know that almost all theories of this ilk tend to be dismissed because they break the laws of physics.
cromwellian 6y ago
Wolfram seems to have a narcissistic ego that demands stroking, maybe the result of being a child prodigy and the subsequent expectations of those around him, but he seems to yearn for praise and turns salty when he doesn’t get it.
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  I dunno. Wolfram has earned a bit of self-assurance in my view. As for the theory itself, I'm in the "wait and see" camp. If it's true or at least on the right path, then it should be generating testable hypothesizes soon enough. Put another way, say his theory was the same in every way, but instead of purporting to prove the fundamentals of our own existence it instead made the claim that there was a two dimensional world with its own constants and physics and that this other universe existed as much as ours does, but that we could never reach it due to what the foundations of the theory laid out. Then I'd be completely uninterested. At least until we were able to simulate this universe with perfect fidelity in a computer. But since it's our very existence then it's only a matter of time until the theory generates a prediction that we can use as the hypothesis for real experimentation and then the theory can rise or die. But until then I'm going to try to keep an open mind.
- dang 6y ago
  This has been repeated ad nauseum in Wolfram threads for many years. Please let's not go there again. Regardless of what you think of Wolfram, it's low-quality discussion and nothing new will ever come of it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=wolfram%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a... We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24664313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24664313.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
api 6y ago
If information is related to energy (as it appears to be), then saying that FTL would require more processing power than can be embodied in the universe is equivalent to saying (as some current theories do) that it would require more energy than can be harnessed in the universe.
daxfohl 6y ago
There was a discussion about dimensionality, but I couldn't decipher -- is there something intrinsic that pushes this model to look like three dimensions? It looked like any dimensionality is equally at home in this model, and generally a random infinite hypergraph would require infinite dimensions to represent as a manifold (or at least I'd think so after a quick think about it). So that we ended up in a universe with three seems quite arbitrary. If Wolfram can find a simple non-arbitrary explanation of why three dimensions, that would be a big step.
- leumassuehtam 6y ago
  The concept of updating rules underlies this model. Each rule determine the evolution of the hypergraph which is space itself, much like a cellular automata. It seems that some rules have the property that as "times goes by" the hypergraph converges to a manifold with dimension d. One can estimate the dimension of such hypergraph using, for example, the growth of the volume of balls[0]. It also seems that this concept is very generic, and many properties of the model do not depend on the dimensionality neither on the manifold or the rule itself. Because this concept is so generic, one hopes that there is a rule that the hypergraph converges to d=3 as in our world. This would also raise questions on why in the very early universe there was a "inflationary" phase. [0] https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/limiting-behavior-and-emergent-geometry/the-notion-of-dimension/ https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/limiti...
- piannucci 6y ago
  You might get an answer by reading about Hausdorff dimension.
- nuncanada 6y ago
  He hasn't derived 3 dimensions from this framework yet... The whole program is very interesting, it might find general laws not only for Physics but for many phenomena, but I feel like Wolfram has jumped the gun on connecting Physics to it... Particularly, I think that quantum non-locality might be evidence that fundamentally 3 dimensions is just an emergent property, but that has yet to be derived from this hypergraph framework...
martythemaniak 6y ago
Wolfram's mode of operations - independently wealthy, publishing things he's interested in on his own terms, in formats and spaces he chooses to - is far closer to how the science of yore operated. Ultimately his ideas will live or die on their merit, not because he did things unconventionally.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Given their lack of any ingress into mainstream scientific acceptance, it's fair to say then they have died, merit-wise - or are only kept alive outside of science while he is able to command the esteem of programmers and the like in fora like this.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    It looks to me that "graph space" theories are not particularly dead these days. There are other physicists working on it.
    - mellosouls 6y ago
      I'd be surprised if there is a significant, unconnected body of established scientists working on Wolfram's TOE stuff.
Kednicma 6y ago
This idiot thinks that material reality is locally real. Please don't post this sort of pseudoscientific quackery.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't violate the HN guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Nokinside 6y ago
Wolfram's theory was already very politely but firmly shown to be wrong 20 years ago, by people who took a look into it. Scott Aaronson for example. https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206089 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206089
- athrowaway3z 6y ago
  If i understand it correctly (which is doubtful), in section 2, the cellular automaton conjecture is dismissed because 110 as a computer suffers from exponential slowdown. >"To prove that 110 is NP-complete, what is needed is to show that Rule 110 allows efficient simulation of Turing machines" But if the universe is a 'computation', then the efficiency of it doesn't really matter right? Similar to creating a Blender rendering, it doesn't matter how long each frame takes to render compared to any other frame, as long as the observer sees a smooth sequence of images.
  - SkyBelow 6y ago
    If you have a simulated virtual world completely isolated from the real world, does it matter if you simulate it at normal speed or 1/1,000th speed to the ones inside the simulation? I think not. We already see this with existing simulations, though they are of much simpler objects than conscious beings. If I simulate water sloshing in a bucket, it doesn't matter how long the simulation runs, the results are the same. Now, I may add in short cuts to make it closer to real time to support practical applications which leads to different results, but a slower machine running the same shortcuts will see the same differences.
- smsx 6y ago
  As far as I understand it, his hypergraph based theory we're reading about here is different from the cellular automata ideas in New Kind of Science?
  - Nokinside 6y ago
    Wolfram's theory or basic ideas don't change when he switches representation from cellular automata to hypergraph.
__tg__ 6y ago
Whatever one thinks of Wolfram's theories, the Mathematica generated diagrams are gorgeous.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aaroninsf 6y ago
Having not encountered this theory of space-time, I am somewhat surprised that it does not at least as far as I have read in the linked article, explicitly state that this model is 100% consistent with and I assume a consequence of assuming that we live in a simulation. I.e. it would take a really light editing pass to change the description given of space-time from a proposal about the physics we live in, to a prescription for a fairly obvious means of building a simulation that runs on some kind of discrete computation engine.
choeger 6y ago
Wait a second. Correct me if I am wrong but does he write that he has a theory of spacetime from that both quantum mechanics and relativity can be derived? Would that not be a slam dunk Nobel prize?
- tmabraham 6y ago
  That's not how this works. Anybody can come up with some random theory, but if it doesn't have testable predictions that can validate the theory, then it doesn't mean we solved quantum gravity. This is the case with Wolfram.
- meroes 6y ago
  Unless something has changed, he is in the camp of people like t' Hooft that claim QM is really an approximation to underlying classical/deterministic/superdeterminism. And while that is possible, the trade-offs are usually far worse or harder to explain than the baggage QM brings. Or just based on an incorrect understanding of QM Here is one breakdown: https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0206089.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0206089.pdf
- beervirus 6y ago
  He's a crank.
aaron695 6y ago
Dear Wolfram please stop wasting time on perpetual motion and get the linguistics on Wolfman Alpha working. Why can't you tell me even the most simple thing? Wolfram Alpha could be great. And since it's exactly what school students want you can capture the market at a young age. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+much++marijuana++can+a+drone+lift https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+much++marijuana++c...
abhayhegde 6y ago
"OK, so what’s the bottom line? Is it in principle possible to go faster than light? And if so, how can we actually do it?" "I’m pretty sure that, yes, in principle it’s possible. In fact, as soon as one views space as having an underlying structure, and not just being a mathematical manifold “all the way down”, it’s pretty much inevitable. But it still requires essentially “hacking” space, and “reverse engineering” its structure to find features like “space tunnels” that one can use." Well, unless he shows what he means via rigourous mathematics or a foolproof demonstration, those are words without meanings.
AndrewOMartin 6y ago
I remember reading that E=mc^2 doesn't say that it's impossible to go faster than light, but rather says that accelerating something from less than the speed of light to the speed of light will take infinite energy. The subtle difference is that if something just, uh, is going faster than light then everything works out. They're are two implications though, one is that it could never be decelerated below the speed of light and the other is that it'll probably have to be traveling backwards in time. Making something that goes backwards in time and faster than light (without using infinite energy) is left as an exercise for the reader.
dTal 6y ago
As far as I can tell, Wolfram has not invented a model of physics at all; he has invented a notation for talking about causal systems. It's not clear to me that his "hypergraph" imposes any constraints on what can be encoded. This at once makes it intriguing from a mathematical perspective, and completely useless as a physics theory, in the same way that epicycles can model a planet with an orbit shaped like Homer Simpson's head. I am not surprised that Wolfram thinks FTL is possible - the real question is, is there anything he thinks is impossible?
Maursault 6y ago
Faster than light was never the problem. Einstein's Theories forbid as fast as light, but say nothing about faster than light travel. Of course, one probably must pass y to get to x. Also, it seems pretty clear that Wolfram does not understand the concept of Warp drive, which is not used to propel the craft, but instead used to warp space to come to the craft, because there is nothing preventing space from traveling faster than light, and, indeed, the expansion of the Universe causes distant galaxies to recede from ours faster than the speed of light. So there you have it, we already have proof of faster than light travel, so we know it is possible. But if FTL travel is not a one way trip, it will tend to introduce causality issues. Say you're somewhere far away and observe some event on Earth that arrived by the speed of light, like maybe a lotto drawing or who wins a game. You could zip back FTL, arrive before the lotto drawing or the result of the game, and bet on those numbers or the game winner. If you were far enough away, you could observe your own birth, and possibly zip back fast enough prevent that from occurring. The Universe may allow FTL travel, but I doubt it will allow such paradox.
- alentist 6y ago
  > Einstein's Theories forbid as fast as light, but say nothing about faster than light travel. Yes it does. This is a basic consequence of the underlying pseudo-Riemannian geometry. In terms of PDEs, the field value at any point is fully determined by the initial conditions on a Cauchy surface within its past light cone. Quantum mechanically, field operators at spacelike-separated points commute. > Also, it seems pretty clear that Wolfram does not understand the concept of Warp drive, which is not used to propel the craft, but instead used to warp space to come to the craft You didn’t read the article. This is addressed at the end, under “What about warp bubbles and the Alcubierre metric?”.
dfischer 6y ago
This reminds me of the fungi sub space system that was in Star Trek Discovery (season 2). Interesting.
angel_j 6y ago
The amount of hate in this thread is so typical HN, somebody should be concerned (oh but we must keep the forum civil). There isn't a single thread of consideration on the topic, only a dogpile of naysaying by anonymous commentariat of dubious credibility. Presented with a difficult read, the comments clearly show nobody here actually tried. Can a forum of programmers and techies really not fathom a computational approach to physics? Graphs are only a social database to you? You worship a framework of physics fraught with limitations, missing pieces, and paradoxes, which few of you understand beyond a simplification, and act like the Pope of Quantum Physics. Disruption huurrrrrr. What a cesspool. You people are techno-sheep.
dfischer 6y ago
The knee jerk reactions to so quickly dismiss Stephen is sad. Here you have someone doing novel explorations of our understanding and unquestionably adding to the total knowledge of our species regardless if he is closer to right or wrong. Why be so poisonous? Sad.
edem 6y ago
So how does this relate to the Warp drive? At the end he casually mentions that they are completely different, but I don't see why.
fallingfrog 6y ago
I know that Wolfram has a reputation for being a bit of a hack; but in this case, I’m not a good enough physicist to see why. It all appears.. plausible? Although I don’t see new testable predictions, it does look like his theory reconciles quantum mechanics and general relativity and ties it all up with a nice bow. So, if I were a real physicist I think I’d be interested. Maybe part of the problem here is that Wolfram has a reputation for being a jerk, and a bit self important. I’ve spoken to people who saw him give a talk, and he evidently skipped all the other presentations, demanded a massive fee, and didn’t stick around for questions.
fallingfrog 6y ago
My understanding is that Wolfram’s idea of a set of connected states that updates according to some rule is close to correct, but not quite as it’s important to note that all the rules are reversible. And the direction of the arrow of time is determined by how many different paths there are pointing away from any given point- points that you’re more likely to land on if you travel between connected states randomly are your most likely future, and the points you’re least likely to land on are your past. In that understanding, in a point like the Big Bang, the network of points is more evenly connected so that there isn’t any clear future or past, which is why time appears to start there. Every point is the future from that configuration and there is no past.

103 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

If it is just an "engineering" problem, then what sort of engineering is required? Are there any real scientists on this, or is it just a well funded crank site?

btilly 6y ago

In other words, "If you believe my unproven theory of physics, and also had access to an unavailable amount of computing power, there might be a way to go faster than light." Most scientists take a full stop at "my unproven theory of physics". He has yet to come up with testable predictions. Let alone trying to test them. Only then there might be a point in listening to the rest. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-criticize-stephen-wolframs-theory-of-everything/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-critic... for more.

naringas 6y ago
might it be a mathematical (and unphysical) theory??
- ianai 6y ago
  Or call it a mathematical model. It’s possible to work within a model and establish truths that follow within it as verifiably true assuming the conditions of the model. That’s actually a pretty interesting way to work in mathematics - ie whether you’re adding the point at infinity in complex analysis or not makes the topology similar to a sphere or plane, respectively.
  - dfischer 6y ago
    Most of physics is a mathematical model. Stephen Wolfram is creating computational models. It’s a natural evolution of reasoning about the universe with the potential to ask if the structure of the universe is computational itself.
uoaei 6y ago
Theory exists independently from any necessity to verify it, per se. I don't think he's ever said anything like "this is a theory that can be used to predict the dynamics of material reality".
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  Hypotheses, conjectures, speculations (however baroque) exist independently. The question is: what is needed for them to become 'theories' in math or science. A basic test is comparison to agreed-on facts. Prediction is considered to be a strong test because it uncovers -new- facts. Else: what's the point?
BluSyn 6y ago
> Most scientists take a full stop at "my unproven theory of physics" Not convinced that's true. Considering how many physicists still keep talking about String Theory, even though it hasn't produced a single testable prediction after 30+ years.
- btilly 6y ago
  You have a point. String theorists did go off of a deep end. But most scientists did not follow them down that course.
- djaque 6y ago
  > hasn't produced a single testable prediction after 30+ years Not completely true. It is able model some aspects of quark gluon plasma. [1] Not a high energy theorist myself, but this is the retort some of my friends would give. It also is well motivated by an entire human history's worth of experimental data which any new theory needs to reproduce. Wolfram fails even to show that this is the case for his work. Note: I'm also not a "true believer" of string theory, but comparing it to Wolfram isn't fair. > Not convinced that's true. Besides making a point about string theory, do you really have a reason to believe that? I know many high energy physics folks myself and work with some of them. I have never met someone that does this professionally that has given Wolfram's theories a second thought. [1] https://www.bnl.gov/rhic/news/091107/story2.asp https://www.bnl.gov/rhic/news/091107/story2.asp
A_No_Name_Mouse 6y ago
> He has yet to come up with testable predictions. Let alone trying to test them. Only then there might be a point in listening to the rest. He is not presenting this as a scientific theory. This is a keynote speech for NASA folks. Just like science fiction is not science, it may still inspire scientists and be worth listening to IMHO.

photonic34 6y ago

> To give a preview of why doing this might devolve into an “engineering problem”, let’s consider a loose (but, in the end, not quite so loose) analogy. Imagine you’ve got molecules of gas in a room, all bouncing around and colliding with each other. Now imagine there’s a special molecule—or even a tiny speck of dust or a virus particle—somewhere in the room. Normally the special molecule will be buffeted by the molecules in the air, and will move in some kind of random walk, gradually diffusing across the room. But imagine that the special molecule somehow knows enough about the motion of the air molecules that it can compute exactly where to go to avoid being buffeted. Then that special molecule can travel much faster than diffusion—and effectively make a beeline from one side of the room to the other. Of course this requires more knowledge and more computation than we currently imagine something like a molecule can muster (though it’s not clear this is true when we start thinking about explicitly constructing molecule-scale computers). But the point is that the limit on the speed of the molecule is less a question of what’s physically possible, and more a question of what’s “engineerable”. This is posed as a computational resource problem, but it strikes me as an information problem. How do you know where the aggressor molecules are and what their paths (i.e. future states) are? Perhaps it’s possible to know the very local conditions and dodge an imminent collision, but does that generalize to arbitrarily long paths? Can I make it to the other end of the room, dodging only the molecules right in front of me? Or can I set out on a path from the beginning that has no solution in the end because it results in an unsolvable state? And if the only way to know is to know the full state of the molecules that may affect my journey, beginning to end, doesn’t their state have to be known at the outset of the journey? If the information about their state itself has a speed limit, and if their state is not fully observable or fully deterministic, what sort of computation can defeat that?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
More, it betrays a very simplistic view of physics. How does the special molecule move? By magic? By willpower? By an internal combustion engine? It needs some way of changing its course. Molecules don't have such a mechanism, except for bouncing off of other molecules. And, how does the molecule know where the other molecules are? It's psychic? Lidar? Radar? How? What's it's energy source for emitting whatever it has to emit to be able to gather the information that it needs? The analogy is, if we take a superficial knowledge of physics, and don't actually think about the details, we can construct a wonderful-sounding-but-not-actually-possible scenario. That's perhaps an accurate analogy for what Wolfram is really proposing.

stephc_int13 6y ago

"Most scientists take a full stop at "my unproven theory of physics". He has yet to come up with testable predictions. Let alone trying to test them. Only then there might be a point in listening to the rest." This is dumb. Einstein's theories were not proven overnight and many were skepticals at the time.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
However, Einstein's theories did make testable predictions.
- stephc_int13 6y ago
  It wasn't obvious at the time.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Let's see. Einstein published his general relativity paper in 1915. One of the things it explained was the precesion of Mercury, but that was already known - it wasn't a prediction or a test. When was the observation of the sun bending starlight during a solar eclipse? 1919 - and Einstein proposed the test. He found ways to test the predictions rather quickly.
jschwartzi 6y ago
Einstein's theories were based on existing experimental results. In fact for Special Relativity he merely stated what must be true for the Michaelson-Morley experiment to fail to show any speed difference with respect to the ether. Lorentz and other physicists had already derived a set of equations(called Lorentz transformations) that must be true given the experimental failure. But they considered it unthinkable that the speed of light could be constant in all inertial reference frames, so they thought those equations were wrong or that there was something they were missing. The only thing Einstein did in that situation was come in and say "hey what if that unthinkable thing were actually true?" Contrast this with Wolfram's article, where he's postulating the existence of an entire kind of physics without any experimental or phenomenological basis. The comparison is without any basis.

WJW 6y ago

A very Stephen Wolfram article. As usual, if you assume all his unproven priors (ie, reality is actually a hypergraph with well defined update rules, the hypergraph has premade nonlocal 'long threads' in it) and go along with his redefinition of the speed of light as the speed of causality then the article makes perfect sense. Where the trouble starts is that there seems to be no evidence whatsoever to support the axioms, and also no way to actually measure the predicted effects. It is not so different from saying "There might be a godlike being out there that can just teleport us anywhere we want, but we have no way of contacting it or even of being sure it exists". A cool theory, but until any proofs or falsifications come along it is indistinguishable from science fiction.

prionassembly 6y ago
I think he's content with this reputation; also independently wealthy and not taking public funds or seats in academia. I say the future generations will be better off for Wolfram having gone down his rabbit holes.
- mnemonicsloth 6y ago
  Right. Except for all the times he's claimed credit for others' work. And his wikipedia page has been thoroughly whitewashed, which suggests he is not content with the reputation he deserves.
czbond 6y ago
But is still worth noting. Science tends to be pretty rigid, and often dismissive of outlandish theories because participants in the field are too close to 'socially accepted facts'. Which as we know from human existence - humans have small minds due to social conformity.....
- mellosouls 6y ago
  It's not worth noting - because we also know that almost all theories of this ilk tend to be dismissed because they break the laws of physics.

cromwellian 6y ago

Wolfram seems to have a narcissistic ego that demands stroking, maybe the result of being a child prodigy and the subsequent expectations of those around him, but he seems to yearn for praise and turns salty when he doesn’t get it.

3pt14159 6y ago
I dunno. Wolfram has earned a bit of self-assurance in my view. As for the theory itself, I'm in the "wait and see" camp. If it's true or at least on the right path, then it should be generating testable hypothesizes soon enough. Put another way, say his theory was the same in every way, but instead of purporting to prove the fundamentals of our own existence it instead made the claim that there was a two dimensional world with its own constants and physics and that this other universe existed as much as ours does, but that we could never reach it due to what the foundations of the theory laid out. Then I'd be completely uninterested. At least until we were able to simulate this universe with perfect fidelity in a computer. But since it's our very existence then it's only a matter of time until the theory generates a prediction that we can use as the hypothesis for real experimentation and then the theory can rise or die. But until then I'm going to try to keep an open mind.
dang 6y ago
This has been repeated ad nauseum in Wolfram threads for many years. Please let's not go there again. Regardless of what you think of Wolfram, it's low-quality discussion and nothing new will ever come of it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=wolfram%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a... We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24664313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24664313.
- cromwellian 6y ago

api 6y ago

If information is related to energy (as it appears to be), then saying that FTL would require more processing power than can be embodied in the universe is equivalent to saying (as some current theories do) that it would require more energy than can be harnessed in the universe.

daxfohl 6y ago

There was a discussion about dimensionality, but I couldn't decipher -- is there something intrinsic that pushes this model to look like three dimensions? It looked like any dimensionality is equally at home in this model, and generally a random infinite hypergraph would require infinite dimensions to represent as a manifold (or at least I'd think so after a quick think about it). So that we ended up in a universe with three seems quite arbitrary. If Wolfram can find a simple non-arbitrary explanation of why three dimensions, that would be a big step.

leumassuehtam 6y ago
The concept of updating rules underlies this model. Each rule determine the evolution of the hypergraph which is space itself, much like a cellular automata. It seems that some rules have the property that as "times goes by" the hypergraph converges to a manifold with dimension d. One can estimate the dimension of such hypergraph using, for example, the growth of the volume of balls[0]. It also seems that this concept is very generic, and many properties of the model do not depend on the dimensionality neither on the manifold or the rule itself. Because this concept is so generic, one hopes that there is a rule that the hypergraph converges to d=3 as in our world. This would also raise questions on why in the very early universe there was a "inflationary" phase. [0] https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/limiting-behavior-and-emergent-geometry/the-notion-of-dimension/ https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/limiti...
piannucci 6y ago
You might get an answer by reading about Hausdorff dimension.
nuncanada 6y ago
He hasn't derived 3 dimensions from this framework yet... The whole program is very interesting, it might find general laws not only for Physics but for many phenomena, but I feel like Wolfram has jumped the gun on connecting Physics to it... Particularly, I think that quantum non-locality might be evidence that fundamentally 3 dimensions is just an emergent property, but that has yet to be derived from this hypergraph framework...

martythemaniak 6y ago

Wolfram's mode of operations - independently wealthy, publishing things he's interested in on his own terms, in formats and spaces he chooses to - is far closer to how the science of yore operated. Ultimately his ideas will live or die on their merit, not because he did things unconventionally.

mellosouls 6y ago
Given their lack of any ingress into mainstream scientific acceptance, it's fair to say then they have died, merit-wise - or are only kept alive outside of science while he is able to command the esteem of programmers and the like in fora like this.
- jlokier 6y ago
  It looks to me that "graph space" theories are not particularly dead these days. There are other physicists working on it.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    I'd be surprised if there is a significant, unconnected body of established scientists working on Wolfram's TOE stuff.

Kednicma 6y ago

This idiot thinks that material reality is locally real. Please don't post this sort of pseudoscientific quackery.

dang 6y ago
Please don't violate the HN guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nokinside 6y ago

Wolfram's theory was already very politely but firmly shown to be wrong 20 years ago, by people who took a look into it. Scott Aaronson for example. https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206089 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206089

athrowaway3z 6y ago
If i understand it correctly (which is doubtful), in section 2, the cellular automaton conjecture is dismissed because 110 as a computer suffers from exponential slowdown. >"To prove that 110 is NP-complete, what is needed is to show that Rule 110 allows efficient simulation of Turing machines" But if the universe is a 'computation', then the efficiency of it doesn't really matter right? Similar to creating a Blender rendering, it doesn't matter how long each frame takes to render compared to any other frame, as long as the observer sees a smooth sequence of images.
- SkyBelow 6y ago
  If you have a simulated virtual world completely isolated from the real world, does it matter if you simulate it at normal speed or 1/1,000th speed to the ones inside the simulation? I think not. We already see this with existing simulations, though they are of much simpler objects than conscious beings. If I simulate water sloshing in a bucket, it doesn't matter how long the simulation runs, the results are the same. Now, I may add in short cuts to make it closer to real time to support practical applications which leads to different results, but a slower machine running the same shortcuts will see the same differences.
smsx 6y ago
As far as I understand it, his hypergraph based theory we're reading about here is different from the cellular automata ideas in New Kind of Science?
- Nokinside 6y ago
  Wolfram's theory or basic ideas don't change when he switches representation from cellular automata to hypergraph.

__tg__ 6y ago

Whatever one thinks of Wolfram's theories, the Mathematica generated diagrams are gorgeous.

deleted 6y ago

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aaroninsf 6y ago

Having not encountered this theory of space-time, I am somewhat surprised that it does not at least as far as I have read in the linked article, explicitly state that this model is 100% consistent with and I assume a consequence of assuming that we live in a simulation. I.e. it would take a really light editing pass to change the description given of space-time from a proposal about the physics we live in, to a prescription for a fairly obvious means of building a simulation that runs on some kind of discrete computation engine.

choeger 6y ago

Wait a second. Correct me if I am wrong but does he write that he has a theory of spacetime from that both quantum mechanics and relativity can be derived? Would that not be a slam dunk Nobel prize?

tmabraham 6y ago
That's not how this works. Anybody can come up with some random theory, but if it doesn't have testable predictions that can validate the theory, then it doesn't mean we solved quantum gravity. This is the case with Wolfram.
meroes 6y ago
Unless something has changed, he is in the camp of people like t' Hooft that claim QM is really an approximation to underlying classical/deterministic/superdeterminism. And while that is possible, the trade-offs are usually far worse or harder to explain than the baggage QM brings. Or just based on an incorrect understanding of QM Here is one breakdown: https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0206089.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0206089.pdf
beervirus 6y ago
He's a crank.

aaron695 6y ago

Dear Wolfram please stop wasting time on perpetual motion and get the linguistics on Wolfman Alpha working. Why can't you tell me even the most simple thing? Wolfram Alpha could be great. And since it's exactly what school students want you can capture the market at a young age. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+much++marijuana++can+a+drone+lift https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+much++marijuana++c...

abhayhegde 6y ago

"OK, so what’s the bottom line? Is it in principle possible to go faster than light? And if so, how can we actually do it?" "I’m pretty sure that, yes, in principle it’s possible. In fact, as soon as one views space as having an underlying structure, and not just being a mathematical manifold “all the way down”, it’s pretty much inevitable. But it still requires essentially “hacking” space, and “reverse engineering” its structure to find features like “space tunnels” that one can use." Well, unless he shows what he means via rigourous mathematics or a foolproof demonstration, those are words without meanings.

AndrewOMartin 6y ago

I remember reading that E=mc^2 doesn't say that it's impossible to go faster than light, but rather says that accelerating something from less than the speed of light to the speed of light will take infinite energy. The subtle difference is that if something just, uh, is going faster than light then everything works out. They're are two implications though, one is that it could never be decelerated below the speed of light and the other is that it'll probably have to be traveling backwards in time. Making something that goes backwards in time and faster than light (without using infinite energy) is left as an exercise for the reader.

dTal 6y ago

As far as I can tell, Wolfram has not invented a model of physics at all; he has invented a notation for talking about causal systems. It's not clear to me that his "hypergraph" imposes any constraints on what can be encoded. This at once makes it intriguing from a mathematical perspective, and completely useless as a physics theory, in the same way that epicycles can model a planet with an orbit shaped like Homer Simpson's head. I am not surprised that Wolfram thinks FTL is possible - the real question is, is there anything he thinks is impossible?

Maursault 6y ago

Faster than light was never the problem. Einstein's Theories forbid as fast as light, but say nothing about faster than light travel. Of course, one probably must pass y to get to x. Also, it seems pretty clear that Wolfram does not understand the concept of Warp drive, which is not used to propel the craft, but instead used to warp space to come to the craft, because there is nothing preventing space from traveling faster than light, and, indeed, the expansion of the Universe causes distant galaxies to recede from ours faster than the speed of light. So there you have it, we already have proof of faster than light travel, so we know it is possible. But if FTL travel is not a one way trip, it will tend to introduce causality issues. Say you're somewhere far away and observe some event on Earth that arrived by the speed of light, like maybe a lotto drawing or who wins a game. You could zip back FTL, arrive before the lotto drawing or the result of the game, and bet on those numbers or the game winner. If you were far enough away, you could observe your own birth, and possibly zip back fast enough prevent that from occurring. The Universe may allow FTL travel, but I doubt it will allow such paradox.

alentist 6y ago
> Einstein's Theories forbid as fast as light, but say nothing about faster than light travel. Yes it does. This is a basic consequence of the underlying pseudo-Riemannian geometry. In terms of PDEs, the field value at any point is fully determined by the initial conditions on a Cauchy surface within its past light cone. Quantum mechanically, field operators at spacelike-separated points commute. > Also, it seems pretty clear that Wolfram does not understand the concept of Warp drive, which is not used to propel the craft, but instead used to warp space to come to the craft You didn’t read the article. This is addressed at the end, under “What about warp bubbles and the Alcubierre metric?”.

dfischer 6y ago

This reminds me of the fungi sub space system that was in Star Trek Discovery (season 2). Interesting.

angel_j 6y ago

The amount of hate in this thread is so typical HN, somebody should be concerned (oh but we must keep the forum civil). There isn't a single thread of consideration on the topic, only a dogpile of naysaying by anonymous commentariat of dubious credibility. Presented with a difficult read, the comments clearly show nobody here actually tried. Can a forum of programmers and techies really not fathom a computational approach to physics? Graphs are only a social database to you? You worship a framework of physics fraught with limitations, missing pieces, and paradoxes, which few of you understand beyond a simplification, and act like the Pope of Quantum Physics. Disruption huurrrrrr. What a cesspool. You people are techno-sheep.

dfischer 6y ago

The knee jerk reactions to so quickly dismiss Stephen is sad. Here you have someone doing novel explorations of our understanding and unquestionably adding to the total knowledge of our species regardless if he is closer to right or wrong. Why be so poisonous? Sad.

edem 6y ago

So how does this relate to the Warp drive? At the end he casually mentions that they are completely different, but I don't see why.

fallingfrog 6y ago

I know that Wolfram has a reputation for being a bit of a hack; but in this case, I’m not a good enough physicist to see why. It all appears.. plausible? Although I don’t see new testable predictions, it does look like his theory reconciles quantum mechanics and general relativity and ties it all up with a nice bow. So, if I were a real physicist I think I’d be interested. Maybe part of the problem here is that Wolfram has a reputation for being a jerk, and a bit self important. I’ve spoken to people who saw him give a talk, and he evidently skipped all the other presentations, demanded a massive fee, and didn’t stick around for questions.

fallingfrog 6y ago

My understanding is that Wolfram’s idea of a set of connected states that updates according to some rule is close to correct, but not quite as it’s important to note that all the rules are reversible. And the direction of the arrow of time is determined by how many different paths there are pointing away from any given point- points that you’re more likely to land on if you travel between connected states randomly are your most likely future, and the points you’re least likely to land on are your past. In that understanding, in a point like the Big Bang, the network of points is more evenly connected so that there isn’t any clear future or past, which is why time appears to start there. Every point is the future from that configuration and there is no past.