Simulating Space and Time

Abstract

This paper asks if a virtual space-time could appear to those within it as our space-time does to us. A processing grid network is proposed to underlie not just matter and energy, but also space and time. The suggested "screen" for our familiar three dimensional world is the inner surface of a four-dimensional hyper-sphere bubble. Light waves and matter travel on this surface in directions defined by its architecture. Time derives from its processing sequences, as movies run static states together to emulate events. Yet what is proposed to exist is not the static states but the dynamic processing between them, with quantum collapse the irreversible event giving time its direction. In this virtual reality, empty space is null processing, directions are node connections, time is processing cycles, light is an information wave, objects are information tangles and energy is information in transfer. This strange interpretation suits a world where empty space is not empty, directions warp, time dilates, light never tires, existence smears and energy is the common currency of all interactions.