A Thought Experiment Regarding the Existence of Time [2016]
— originally posted on my old bogger blog at parmu.ml on 12th October 2016 —
Some people propose that the notion of time is completely psychological and is not intrinsic to the Universe. While others say it is intrinsic to the Universe. I'm on no ones side. But I've come up with a thought experiment that might be useful.
It goes like this:
If we simulate the laws of physics and the Universe from the big bang on a very powerful computer with certain initial conditions. According to current laws of physics it would it take 10^10^10^56 years for this universe to die and another to born. Now, how much time would the computer simulation take?
Since it is an imaginary computer with such power that it takes no time in performing astronomicaly complex Calculations. Shouldn't it complete all tasks in ZERO time? That universe will die in no time.
A program like this would terminate in no time:
This program will terminate in no time. The only time it takes is the for the processor to perform calculations, Which for our imaginary computer takes no time.
When programmers come across these problems they add another line to pause the program at every iteration to dumb down the flow to the level of 'human perception'.
A delay is called to pause the program for given milliseconds. This program will now wait for 1 second at every iteration.
Now the point is: Does the Universe have this delay() intrinsically? or is it intrinsic to human perception only?