Modelling Particle Physics
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NoFreeWill
- Posts: 7
- Joined: December 6th, 2014, 3:58 am
Modelling Particle Physics
Has anyone come up with a way to model atomic nucleii or sub atomic particles using cellular automata?
Re: Modelling Particle Physics
Certainly not any simple CA.. It's funny in a way, theoretical physics was essentially the search for a simple set of rules to describe everything. Instead, most theoretical physics relies on concepts that can hardly be described as simple.
It would be great to try to come up with some good graphical demo though, without losing the functionality. Quantum superposition is lost in state-based CA types though, the concept of different viable interactions acting on different bases of the same particle group (strong vs weak basis for K0 mesons, for example) would be impossible to capture with a CA that took particles as fundamental states.
I believe Feynman and Wolfram tried to set up a couple of basic rules that any CA to simulate our universe must satisfy - the one I remember is directional isotropy; meaning that the neighborhood of any cell couldn't be a simple grid-based neighborhood, but rather one's neighbors have to come from a probabilistic distribution that averages out over reasonable scales to isotropy..
Basically, there are a lot of things keeping this from being a tractable problem, so it hasn't been solved yet, but it is very cool to think about.
It would be great to try to come up with some good graphical demo though, without losing the functionality. Quantum superposition is lost in state-based CA types though, the concept of different viable interactions acting on different bases of the same particle group (strong vs weak basis for K0 mesons, for example) would be impossible to capture with a CA that took particles as fundamental states.
I believe Feynman and Wolfram tried to set up a couple of basic rules that any CA to simulate our universe must satisfy - the one I remember is directional isotropy; meaning that the neighborhood of any cell couldn't be a simple grid-based neighborhood, but rather one's neighbors have to come from a probabilistic distribution that averages out over reasonable scales to isotropy..
Basically, there are a lot of things keeping this from being a tractable problem, so it hasn't been solved yet, but it is very cool to think about.
Physics: sophistication from simplicity.
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NoFreeWill
- Posts: 7
- Joined: December 6th, 2014, 3:58 am
Re: Modelling Particle Physics
Directional isotropy may only be necessary at larger scales.biggiemac wrote: I believe Feynman and Wolfram tried to set up a couple of basic rules that any CA to simulate our universe must satisfy - the one I remember is directional isotropy; meaning that the neighborhood of any cell couldn't be a simple grid-based neighborhood, but rather one's neighbors have to come from a probabilistic distribution that averages out over reasonable scales to isotropy..
Re: Modelling Particle Physics
This exactly the issue. CAs local properties usually propagates into large scales, and this phenomenon is very hard to overcome (take any CA and run a random soup there) - and the question is what for?NoFreeWill wrote:Directional isotropy may only be necessary at larger scales.
Physical rules are '"CAs" on continues grid. Any differential equation is local propagation rule in this continues CA.