Vitaly Vanchurin, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota Duluth, has come up with a bold hypothesis: the entire universe may be a giant neural network. He says, “It does sound crazy, but maybe it’s true? We’ll see.”
What is a neural network? It is like the human brain, the senses to collect a variety of information, through a series of “thinking” rules to process, to make a variety of judgments system.
For years, physicists have been exploring how to unify quantum theory and relativity. The former sees the universe as a continuous system, while the latter sees everything as relative in space-Time, a system based on the concept of space-time.
In a paper submitted to preprint.arXiv in the middle of last year, Fan Chulin mentioned that he believes that the neural network of the brain also behaves in a way that embodies both theories. Quantum theory is now the Perception pushed by most scientists, and some are actually starting to think that perhaps at the most fundamental level, the entire universe is governed by quantum theory, from which everything else, including gravity, is derived.
In a recent interview with the technology news network Futurism, Chulin Fan described his research as starting from two aspects.
On the one hand, he starts with what scientists have learned about the working model of neural networks. He found that the equations of quantum science explain well what happens when the system is near equilibrium; while the equations of classical mechanics explain well what happens when the system deviates from equilibrium. This left him in awe. Could this be a coincidence? But all that is known so far is that the world is dominated by these two laws.
On the other hand, he started to think in terms of physics. People know that quantum theory explains the microscopic world well; relativity theory explains the macroscopic world well. But until now, scientists have not been able to integrate the two theories. This is exactly what is being studied in a field called Quantum gravity.
But not only that, it has been found that one does not know how to deal with the observer either. In quantum science, the observer is an important element, and for different observers, the same object is in a completely different state. This truth is also true for this universe, where there are completely different perceptions from different observation perspectives.
Therefore, it is also said that it is now necessary to unify not only quantum theory and relativity, but also to combine the three observers in order to describe the world comprehensively. Fan Chulin said that 99% of physicists believe that quantum theory is the most important law, and everything else is a sub-law derived from it. But no one has been able to express this idea clearly in theory.
In his paper, van Chulen says he considers an alternative explanation of the universe: He believes that the miniature neural network is the basic structure on which the universe is built, and that everything else, including quantum theory, relativity and macroscopic observers, is derived from it. Fanchulin sees this theory as promising.
The theory sounds bold, admits van Chulainen. So far, most of these laws that try to “sum up everything” have been proven wrong. To refute his theory, all one needs to do is find a phenomenon that cannot be modeled by a “neural network.
Think about it, says Fanchulin, if you don’t believe me, isn’t that hard? After all, scientists are still unclear about how neural networks actually work and how much potential they have. Perhaps scientists should start by developing neural networks and deep learning systems that more closely resemble the way the human brain works. This is exactly the kind of research he is now committed to conducting himself.
Recent Comments