4 ms·
Some years ago, when learning about quantum mechanics, and how you could find a particle inside a forbidden region, I connected that with physics engines in gam
by gzalo 6y ago
Some years ago, when learning about quantum mechanics, and how you could find a particle inside a forbidden region, I connected that with physics engines in games (and how computing them not fast enough can cause things to intersect in odd ways), and I had this idea:
What if time flows in discrete steps, but the `ticks` aren't uniformly separated? For example, they could be distributed probabilistically as a Poisson distribution. In that case, a particle hitting a potential barrier could pass it briefly, until the tick happens and it moves out of it.
There might be a way to compute an optimal probability distribution for that case, but I'm not sure if it could be consistent with Schrödinger equation.
But I never had time nor knowledge to search whether someone had already thought of it, or if it could be even remotely plausible.
- _def 6y agoI now have even more respect towards speedrunners and glitch hunters than I already had. They are like scientists of fictional universes!
- jonsen 6y ago> ...whether someone had already thought of it Stephen Wolfram certainly did in A New Kind of Science: https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/chap-9--fundamental-physics/ https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/chap-9--fundamental-physi... And Louis Nielsen: https://www.rostra.dk/louis/ https://www.rostra.dk/louis/ And probably many others.
- PUSH_AX 6y ago> Some years ago, when learning about quantum mechanics, and how you could find a particle inside a forbidden region Where can I learn more about this? It sounds interesting.
- gzalo 6y agoThe classical simplest "problem" is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectangular_potential_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectangular_potential_barrier And the actual quantum phenomenon is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling
- matthewfcarlson 6y agoI took a creative writing class at University (mostly on a whim). One of the stories I proof-read was a novel about this idea. That the universe didn't tick at a uniform rate and there were people who could "tick" faster or slow. Of course, you run into all sorts of people with breathing and moving through very hard air. The core tenet of the book was that the clock domains of the universe were drifting apart at an accelerated rate and the protagonists were trying to stop it. It was an interesting concept and a fun short story.
- benibela 6y ago>core tenet of the book was that the clock domains of the universe were drifting apart at an accelerated rate and the protagonists were trying to stop it. Another idea would be to have the clocks running backwards.
- CodexArcanum 6y agoThere's a theory on how the universe is structured that instead of space-time being like a uniform grid, a Cartesian space, that space-time is made up of nodes which are linked together. I guess kind of like a voronoi diagram in 4 dimensions. I wish I could remember the name of those theories. If space-time is packed together in most places, then it might resemble a grid to us. This model works in a lot of interesting ways too: wormholes are just links between two otherwise unconnected regions, the curvature of ST can vary depending on the region, and time can flow at varying rates depending on how "dense with time" an area is. One thing I like about it is that Planck units kind of just represent a minimal distance between nodes (indeed, the connections between nodes defines "distance" and "duration") and everything else just falls out of the geometry of this ST graph.
- pfraze 6y agoA few years ago, I saw a proposal for multiplayer games which suggested that the time passage between ticks vary depending on how many users are playing within a close space, to help deal with the increased network load. This is something that Eve Online does, but it segments its game-space into discrete sectors and therefore it slows down time uniformly in these sectors. This proposal was to do the same, but variably within one contiguous gamespace, meaning players would observe each other “slowing down.” This seemed interesting to me because, well, what on earth would it do to your game physics to have varying time passage between ticks depending on your position in space? So I rigged up a simple simulation of 2 points connected by a spring force (a “body”), gave them an initial velocity, and set the tick to slow down linearly according to distance from a “center.” The end result was that the body orbited around the center. The varying time passage meant that the spring force’s effect on the point masses would be reduced for the points in the slower tick speed. So it seems like you can create a kind of “gravity” by bending time but not space. Here’s a link to the sim: https://pfrazee.github.io/gsim/ https://pfrazee.github.io/gsim/
- ardit33 6y agoWe have already that. Thats time dilation due to gravity! In places/spaces with larger mass (aka stuff), time flows slower....
- pfraze 6y agoYeah the thing I find interesting is this works by only bending time, whereas I understand gravity to involve bending space as well.
- yencabulator 6y ago"Does Time Cause Gravity?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKxQTvqcpSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKxQTvqcpSg