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Original post by krez
nah they either get less hot and smaller, turning into a dwarf star and then just burn out, or in the case of suns big enough (like ours), they collapse and explode, causing a red giant (which not only would toast all the planets up to mars or so, but would also eventually shrink down into a red dwarf and then burn out). of course all this happens over the course of millions of years.

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

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Our sun won''t collapse and THEN turn into a red giant. They would first grow in size, then turn into a red giant and after this it could become a super-nova.
But I think it could also collapse and remain as a brown dwarf or a neutron-star or maybe a pulsar (or even a black hole if the star was big enough?). Anyway, different sizes result in different "deaths" of the stars.
Oh and the gas-clouds remaining from a dead solar-system would then reform to a new one...

I''ve read also another thing: When a sun burned all of its hydrogenium it starts burning Helium to Carbonium. This can go up to Iron, I think. Any comments?


Yesterday we still stood at the verge of the abyss,
today we''re a step onward!

i dont know much about the universe, but the one thing i do know that is relevent is this:

If the sun was to become a black hole, it would have to be compressed to the size of a pea.

The reason is that a black hole is simply a planet which has a force of gravity that is so strong that the speed needed to escape from its pull is faster than the speed of light, hence light cannot escape. Seen as gravity is simply the density of the planet, the sun must become the size of a pea to have a density great enough to become a balck hole.

It is my ujdestanding that the sun will collapse, then expand to swallow mars too...

what this has to do with "The Thirteenth Floor" i do not know...

G Coates
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Gavin Coates

Co-Founder

http://www.multiplayercentral.co.uk

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Original post by gavco98
what this has to do with "The Thirteenth Floor" i do not know...

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Good point.. LOL



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Allow me to clear my head for once...
Stop polluting the air!

Don't you think we're getting of the main question here? =)

Well, to redirect everything, i would like to say my opinion:
No, you cannot make an exact simulation of our world. Why? There isn't enought material to do so!
For example: If you take up a rock of the ground and do a simulation of it. ok, we need zoom in so we can see the atoms of the rock. (Or even zoom in longer?) Ok, now we need to simulate this atom. We need a position for it, say 3 floats (It wouldn't last, but let's accept it for now.), further, we need it speed in the 3 directions, additional 3 floats. And we need it's energy level. We are now up to 7 floats. Just for one atom.

How many atoms are there in a bit in the computer?



Edited by - Electron on November 11, 2001 2:56:59 PM

After i wrote this previous reply, i went thinking: There is no way you can do an exact simulation of your own world. Sure, you can do shortcuts (Like textured walls in a game), but you can never let it have the same features as in the real world. (Try to blast a wall in, say Quake.)

I''d like to say our world is pretty advanced. Everything''s got a function. Our universe is pretty big, isn''t it?

If this is only a simulation, imagine the size of the real world.

Well, that''s why it''s called science fiction!
The Matrix (Thirteenth floor doesn''t specify if I''m correct) takes places in the future. Maybe by then the machines are big enough to simulate it.
Not every atom has to be simulated, though, just the impulses sent to our brains when touching, eating, smelling etc it.

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Allow me to clear my head for once...
Stop polluting the air!

No you really don''t have to simulate every quark or atom (just to stress it), but you could surely do it because:
1. Noone said the simulation had to be as fast as reality
2. As in the 13th Floor only a part of the world was simulated
3. If you as a human don''t want to interact with this world can run at whatever speed you want it (it can) (just to make point 1 clearer and to blow up my listing)

The other question is: Why would you want to do it if you can''t interact with it (at least in realtime)...

Oh and btw, try blasting walls in ''Red Faction''


Yesterday we still stood at the verge of the abyss,
today we''re a step onward!

Our universe has to be a simulation. There''s no way a world as complex as ours could be created ''randomly'' or by accident. I like to think of the big bang theory as some highly intelligent being entering or creating our universe. Now our universe was created in what ... billions of years? It''s just basically an experiment, just as was the dinosaurs. It''s amazing how much the universe and people have evolved.

And now we _just_ began creating simulations of our own, computer generated virtual worlds, with only a few hundred thousand years of evolution. Even though our simulations are nothing compared to our world, give it a billion years and im sure we could have a contender. Maybe the people running our simulation are just very advanced humans or are very similar to us, but just very evolved forms Maybe the link to the outer world lies in the center of the universe where it all began, or the center of a black hole [the most interesting thing in the universe imo].<br><br>You know if you enter a black hole, time slows for you so basically you can travel through a wormhole [Einstein says they''re there] in no time at all. When you enter a black hole. to the people on the outside it appears that your falling very very very slow into the hole, but to you it appears that people are aging very very fast. So traveling though the center of a blackhole is a form of time-travel. Now just strap on some nuclear fusion or fission [The type of energy the sun, nuclear bombs, and nuclear power plants use as energy … use what works] generators onto the back of a spaceship and travel into that black hole we just discovered a few years ago, the only one we found in the universe so far!<br><br>Sorry if I went a little off topic.<br> <br><br>"1-2GB of virtual memory, that''s way more than i''ll ever need!" - Bill Gates<br><font size="4">"<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~mcleod314/gta/">The Arcade</a>: Quite possibly the game of the century!" - The Gaming Community</font><br><font size="1">may or may not represent anybody in paticular</font><br>

>>Our universe has to be a simulation. There''s no way a world as
>>complex as ours could be created ''randomly'' or by accident.

Well, something complex had to be created by accident. If our universe is a simulation, then whatever it is simulating must be more complex than it. If that more complex universe is just a simulation, than there is something more complex than it, and so on... so eventually one of them had to be created randomly.

By the way, in the Matrix, why did the machines use humans? If all they need is energy, couldn''t they have used a less rebellious species? Deer, maybe? And why not just launch solar power satellites? Sorry, but that movie was full of holes so it kind of bugged me. The special effects did make up for it, though.

>>Seen as gravity is simply the density of the planet, the sun
>>must become the size of a pea to have a density great enough
>>to become a balck hole.

Gravity is the result of mass, not density. Although a star would have to be sufficiently small to collapse into a black hole, the gravity will do all the compression work.

On the real topic, Electron is right. You can''t do a complete simulation of the universe without creating another universe. But you don''t really need to. Just make a simulation where everything happens like people expect it to (well, usually) and no one''s the wiser.

I still haven''t seen the Thirteenth Floor, but it sounds good. I''ll have to check it out.

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Omnipotent_Q
"Natural Gas! It gives you... ideas!"

The only way to overcome the massive storage requirements needed to simulate the universe and at the same time simulate everything all the way down to a microscopic level is to use fractals. One could, with powerful enough hardware, simulate quantum mechanical interactions between a massive number of parametrically-generated subatomic particles and quanta. The problem with this approach is it fails to accurately simulate very large scale macroscopic interactions. The "theory of everything" has not yet been reached; gravity and quantum mechanics do not fit nicely into the same model. We will need the "theory of everything" and a more accurate understanding of the universe in order to simulate all of it.