Tripping the Foam

Deconstructing the universe by creating new ones:

[An] interesting pursuit is to simulate quantum chromodynamics on a computer to see what kind of complexity arises. The promise is that simulating physics on such a fundamental level is more or less equivalent to simulating the universe itself.

There are one or two challenges of course. The physics is mind-bogglingly complex and operates on a vanishingly small scale. So even using the world's most powerful supercomputers, physicists have only managed to simulate tiny corners of the cosmos just a few femtometers across. (A femtometer is 10^-15 metres.)

That may not sound like much but the significant point is that the simulation is essentially indistinguishable from the real thing (at least as far as we understand it).

It's not hard to imagine that Moore's Law-type progress will allow physicists to simulate significantly larger regions of space. A region just a few micrometres across could encapsulate the entire workings of a human cell.

Again, the behaviour of this human cell would be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Hypothesis: If one were to use a quantum computer to simulate a large area of quantum foam as described, thus bringing into existence a self-contained universe, would it mirror our own, or be a completely new and independent entity? Actually I'm not sure where I'm going with that. And the more I think on it, the more my head hurts.

Maybe I'll just get drunk instead. That's the real secret of Life, the Universe and Everything. Because beer comes in tidy little pallets of 24, while the answer is 42... Coincidence? I think not.