Wednesday 6 February 2013

the latrix or virtual reality

I missed this study and rather fanciful proposal from astrophysicists at the University of Bonn, which Wired magazine makes eloquently accessible with plenty of science-fiction and philosophical allusions, stating that essentially by observing the paucity, the tiniest corners, of the Universe that humans are able to simulate (it is an escapingly small environ that can be recreated in the laboratory but because the dimensions—but apparently not the focus—are so limited, we can see there is an underlying quantum lattice-work that does not admit to superimposition, sort of like the antiquated idea of electron-shells) and the upper-limits of how energetic something can be, one begins to find the edges—like dots of pointillism that arrange themselves to form a full picture or the mechanics behind a carnival ride.
Suspending disbelief for a moment, these barriers suggest a self-contained experiment with fixed parameters, elusive but not beyond the eventual acuity of the persistent and morbidly curious. Perhaps this is a clue, peeking behind the curtain, but (and I am sure popular speculation goes far beyond the claims and competency of the research) but it also may be a phenomena programmed into our scientific methods and props. Not too long ago, I can recall, sort of an enthusiastic worry that eventually the advancing capacity of digital imagery with exponential mega-pixels could eventual out-map the real world, pictures containing more “information” than their subjects. I wonder how this will play out.