hoola

if the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, at what point does the material's speed approach C and the speed can go no faster? If this can happen, then the matter coming in from behind it will coalesce and begin forming compressed areas of increasing density...if this continues long enough, does the pressure from behind, and the light speed barrier in front of the material eventually squeeze the material into a black hole density? If this could be true, what shape would the black hole material have? A cloud of mini black holes, spherically shaped as a stationary black holes are, eventually to formulate into a shell of black hole density material, forming a sphere the size as to encompass the entire universe....with more material being attracted to it as the gravity field event horizon increases, perhaps being a minor factor in the increasing speed of the expansion?....it seems a sphere of that size, if one were to somehow approach it with a survey vehicle, would appear to an observer as a flat plane, as any sphere of that gigantic size would be indistinguishable from a perfectly flat surface.....and if this bizarre scenario could take place, what is on the outside of the sphere? In a finite universe, I say nothing....not even dark energy. A "perfect" void....In this humorous thought experiment, we live inside a black hole the size of the universe.....this kind of goes along with the idea that the universe is a 3D hologram that is projected from information encoded on a 2D surface, that surface being the inside of the black hole shell......on a more serious note, the expansion seems to be from the dark energy output from all over space. The most pressing question is why and how does this apparently free energy exist, and does it violate the conservation of energy law? If the expansion continues long enough, at what point does the shell wall thickness increase until the interior is completely closed and the entire universe is encompassed by the black hole event horizon? Like a supernova, at some point before the entire universe became filled, the decreasing internal pressure would be overwhelmed by increasing gravitational forces, causing a black hole collapse, into yet another singularity.....this at least would answer the conservation of energy problem, as all energy would be returned to the singularity and the universe would shrink to the size proposed in the current "big bang" theories.....in this scenario, the gravity field would be so immense as to prevent even gravity itself from escape.....and even more strangely, the dimensions themselves would disappear, drawing in the "perfect void edge" to surround the singularity as the shell collapses .......edd

yes, I agree, and wandering is fun, if I may explain what I meant, the terms "positive and negative feedback" and "complexity" cover enough of the sentience requirements to get the ball rolling towards consciousness...from there it is an unstoppable progression to superior inelligence. Look at how long physical reality took to use regular evolution to create higher intelligenced mammals...billions of years....and how long before we took the basics of computers (the abacus) to a stage that they can mimic awareness and can be somewhat independent ala our remote space missions? Thousands of years. The voyager was likened to the relative intelligence of a grasshopper, and that was back in the 70s...how long from the beginning of life on earth to get to that grasshopper stage...again, billions of years....Do the curve of how long before machine self-awareness goes vertical on the chart, and it seems inevitable we will soon be eclipsed by the next step of evolution...kurt godel said "if ever a person or a computer should come to understand the entirety of mathematics, than that entity will cease to be a mere computer". I am paraphrasing, but the jist I believe is correct....edd

as a vintage electronics collector and repair-person, I like both tube and SS amps, and have both. I have built both and with not just the ascetics of tube architecture, but the actual sound quality, presence, sound stage, or whatever you might call it, seems different to the ear and is technically different. The even-order / odd-order distortion comes into play, but for me the question is the negative feedback used in amplifiers to achieve stability and a desired response curve. I build my own amps and incorporate local negative feedback within a stage, and not have what is termed "globlal" neg. feedback. This is especially important as, although there is endless debate as to if it can be heard or not, global NFB sends a reverse phase signal from the output back to the input in a sort of "race track" of the signal chasing itself around the circuit on an endless quest of keeping the amp parameters in check. This is more of a problem with SS units as the speed of electrons in a vacuum is less in a solid (transistor), than in a vacuum (tube). It also has been used as a crutch to make a basically unstable design rendered stable and reliable enough to be sold to the public. The feed-backs of various types are one type of way a company will have equipment with a characteristic sound quality that some people prefer, just as some people prefer listening to vinyl over CDs, though they are technically inferior. This is one debate I fall on the no "global" NFB side on. I figure, if you can build an amp without it, don't use it. It is largely used industry wide as a money saver as well as giving it a certain sonic character. Another aspect is the DIY aspect of someone who like odd and unusual electronic ideas. What I have built is a "circlotron" amp, requiring multiple output tubes, hence the desire for the filamentless ones. With certain arrangements the amp doesn't need an output transformer as used in all other amps you might see...by hooking the speakers directly to the output tubes there is a technical advantage as the output transformer is a major limitation of frequency response range and power capability, as well introducing it's own form of distortion. That form of distortion is another endless debate as to if it can be heard, called the "flywheel" effect. As a signal voltage waveform to the transformer primary rises and collapses, the energy is transformed into a magnetic field, which is picked up by the secondary, and converted back to a voltage signal. That causes an effect as a collapsing magnetic field tends to continue a reverse EMF for a brief period even after the input is gone....this effect is taken advantage in what is known as a "class c" type amp used in tansmitters, mostly by ham radio operators....in audio, the effect can actually be a small positive, as it "fills in" gaps in the D/A converter's output in a CD player, smoothing out the somewhat chopped up high end as the limitations of certain cheaply recorded CDs become apparent. So, the improvement in removing the transformer reveals the defects within the source material, which is a rule of thumb in the audiophile crowd..... As your overall sound system improves technically, the limitations of the source material become more apparent..... So, my answer is to improve the source, in this case, the SACDs which take a special player, but with a higher sampling rate. Supposedly they are clean in their high end up to over 40 KHZ. Too bad they didn't really take off, but even regular CDs sound pretty good. Some have "special bit mapping" or other listed tweaks, and one of the best CDs I have ever heard is Santana's Abraxas. It has the special bit mapping. I have a SACD player, and my friend brings over a few SACDs, but I tend to not buy on ebay, and that is the main source of them.....another source of high end regular CDs seems to be in the classical stuff put out by deutsche grammophon. The problem with some SACDs is that they are recorded with the intent of being played in surround sound, and don't sound right on an old school 2 channel stereo as I have. Other SACDs did ok, but I have only hear a few, listened to briefly when my friend left some with me for a while....and they seem to be a hit and miss proposition...I have heard talk that CD technology is already nearing extinction....moving to flash memory only....kinda sad....edd

eventually, yes. Since the human mind is a biological computer, it is only a matter of time before a quantum based computer will have the complexity and necessary positive/negative feedback circuitry to achieve awareness, then introspection, then self-awareness. Then things could get interesting....a new form of life...our "frankenstein", if you will, will perhaps continue rapid evolution, surpassing us in emotional and spiritual matters as well as the intellectual, and evolving past the "need and greed" phase we seem to be stuck in...... It might even save us from ourselves....considering that our abuse of technology is causing so much trouble, it is poetic hopeful justice it might offer us a chance to survive the damage we are doing to ourselves and the planet. I think the quickest way to give humankind a lift is the answer to "why anything", of which I think it will have the answer......the obvious question as to it's knowledge that it is reliant on being "plugged in" as it's power source will be a major step in it's personal evolution.....perhaps the fabled "zero point energy" will be finally realized and it's first demonstraton will be with the awareness of "franki" being liberated from physical instrumentalities.....and the ghost will rise from the machine....edd

looks like a magnetic fluid of some sort...perhaps scavenged from tweeters out of your stereo system. They sometimes use a "ferro-magnetic" fluid to increase the efficiency and maintain an even pole piece to voice coil centering...am I close?.....edd

the primary risk to experimenting with high voltages/low currents is the ozone gas generated by the apparatus....supposedly very unhealthy to breath for long periods. I am reading a bio of nikola tesla, and he nearly suffocated once in an experiment gone wrong....edd

how about a snorkel ?? I think lloyd bridges got started that way......seriously, if you are holding the camera, I could see where your own breath condensing on the camera lens might be a problem, and the snorkel idea would be ok for you....however to prevent visible breath condensation from the actors would be difficult and would lend me to think you are not wanting to reveal that the scene is being shot in cold weather, due to continuity issues..... waiting for the occasional warm day in winter could make it a very slow shoot....details such as this are the reasons movies are so expensive to make....and lengthy...waiting for the light to be just right, ambient noises and etc....you might inquire as to a small film company in your area. Perhaps this problem is known about and can be at least minimized by the film community...or you could load up the troupe and travel to the desert and shoot it there...sounds like fun....edd

enthalpy...you are correct in your asessment that fraud is rampant in the audiophile arena...to the point of embarassment to me personally as I have been in the business my whole life....but, what enterprise in commerce/entertainment is free from such problems....caveat emptor...PT barnum is everywhere....If the article in scientific american is correct, the emission of a diamond coated cathode is limited by the current carrying capacity of the metal substrate......and that they would outperform regular tubes and solid state devices. Who knows if this is true, I presume SA did their homework and the article represents real research from MIT....it should be easily gotten online. I haven't tried that as I have my original Oct 1992 issue always with me. They did not use nano damonds, they applied a pure diamond crystalline coating to a cylindrical rod, I believe and got the results they claim. I have been in touch with a company in england that will coat anything you want with an amorphous diamond coating....but I don't want to do anything other than to encourage the tube manufacturers to check out the amorphous diamond coating to see if it will produce the results of the crystalline form, as the amorphous coating is a relatively inexpensive and simple procedure compared to going crystalline. There is a problem with the lack of heat from the filament I can forsee...the "getter" is a barium coated ring that absorbs stray outgassings and it's required in the construction and long life of a tube. During construction, the getter can be activated to purge the interior of the tube to a hard vacuum with microwave inductive heating....however, gasses tend to be emitted by the metal surfaces within the tubes a little at a time. The normally hot filament is used not only to activate the cathode, but keep the getter sequestering gasses over tube lifetime. Some of the gasses, I would conjecture, come from the thorium coated cathode and filament wires...so this source of potential gas would be gone. There is still the plate, grids and internal supports to deal with, so some way would need to be developed to allow the getter to function in at least a minor role as before. The plate of a tube runs hot, and some of the heat is not from the filament, but from plate current. In a diamond cathoded tube, a primary getter would be positioned as normal, and used as normal in the initial purge. A second getter could in theory be affixed to the outside surface of the plate of a tube and some of the normal gettering would take place. In a high current output tubes like a EL34, 6L6, 6550 (of which I have 12 in my DIY stereo circlotron amp), the plates get hot enough to activate a getter if the getter was placed on the plate exterior instead of near the side-wall or on top above the active assembly, I would be willing to venture, owing to simple plate current. A system could be developed to accomplish this goal, at least with getting around the getter problem. A small tube, such as 12AX7, 7025, etc, used in the voltage gain circuitry of a typical amp would not generate enough heat to use the plate as getter activator...so they would remain as normal. They use a small amount of heater current anyway (300ma), so the diamond cathode tube idea only make technological sense if high current output tubes are made filamentless, as they draw anywhere from about 1 amp and up per tube filament. My amp with it's 12-6550 collectively draw 19.2 amps@6.3 volts. In the winter it makes a handy space heater, which works out fine for now, as I heat with electric anyway. In the summer though it is just a pure waste of power. There are several medium sized tubes that might be hot enough for a filament-less plate only activation...in my amp those would be the two 12BH7s that I use as phase inverters and drivers to the outputs. They get pretty hot too. But the output tubes in any tube amp would be the first choice in developing a line of direct replacement output tubes for the legitimate audiophile market, of which there has been one since the late 1940s...and yes, I am one of those people who enjoy the sound of a tube amp, especially if is of the corclotron topology....thanks for you interest....edd

hello ed earl...the hum issue is minimal as there are several ways to minimize it. There is going DC, but which is cumbersome. A better way is by placing a small positive voltage on the AC driven filaments in respect to the cathodes, which is easy (takes 2 small resistors), hum in the voltage gain section of an amp is reduced to near inaudibility.....there is also a less elegant way by introducing a reverse phase of the hum, adjusted to afford cancellation. Yes, some noise is in a tube amp, but any amplifying device has some noise. The thing about distortion is that tubes, when overdriven, deliver an even-order harmonic distortion, which is much more appealing than the odd-order harmonics from a similarly overdriven SS unit....and some levels are distortion are alway present in either system with respective predominate orders of distortion. Guitar players like the even order, with the exception of the heavy metalists who like the harshness and discord of the odd orders...many SS guitar amps have a special overdrive circuit that "fakes" an even harmonic overdrive using a completely transitor/IC driven amp.....and they sound pretty good. I have one or two myself. Stomp boxes have taken the synthesis to an artform and actually sound very appealing, with their so called "tube modeling" creating various type of collectible amp sounds in a multi-select mode....edd

well. that is dependent upon the particular circuits involved. Many audiophiles prefer the tube sound in their home stereos, and are willing to build their own amps customized to their own needs....the amount of distortion/noise is essentially the same for either type circuit, to even critical examination with instruments. Tubes tend towards 2nd order harmonic distortions, and solid state with 3rd order harmonics, In either case, noise and distortions can held down to inaudible levels. I am into circlotron type amps, built with tubes, that do not need output transformers that regular tube amps require, This allow the tubes to be directly connected to the speakers, giving less restriction to the output power bandwidth. The frequency response and other factors are improved by this technique. One source of noise in tube circuits is hum, introduced by the AC voltage delivered to the heaters to activate the cathodes. Without these heaters, that source of noise is gone, but the main advantage is with the increased efficiency of tubes rivaling that of transistors.....and of course, the better stability, longer life, and instant on features that transistors have. the SA article goes on to say that the diamond cathoded tubes could outperform standard tubes and even solid state devices....a pretty tall order. Since they have never been developed to the point of being on the market, who knows....there may be some others who would like to do a fun project of building a few prototype diamond cathoded tubes just to see if the supposed effect works...thanks for your interest....edd

I can well understand the attraction to the idea of perpetual motion by anyone...this perhaps been enhanced by the discovery in 1996 that the universe is expanding, and at an increasing rate, and the action at work is something called "dark energy". There had been before this remarkable discovery an effect in a vacuum called "virtual particles" which seem to arise and them collapse everywhere all the time...the question as to whether the dark energy at work in the universe is the same force previously known as virtual particles is actually being the same force, is a good question. They do seem so to me. It is strange that something called negative energy or virtual particles can be present and quantifiable in the universe and not make a person think...that if the basic fundamentals were known about these seemingly free sources of energy, why couldn't a technolgy be developed to harness them. I have read of "zero-point" energy and have heard that with our current understanding of the energy source, we can conclude that any power being extracted from them in any useable form...as the extraction of any energy from such a diffuse system as dark energy , virtual particles or zero point energy (all the same thing?) would require a vast array of yet to be developed hardware, and would never deliver enough power to make the energy investment in the acquisition of this power come to parity, hence would be a net power loss. A laboratory curiousity I would love to see, nonetheless.....perhaps on the order of a "dark energy radiometer" or that ostrich toy that bobs up and down sticking it's head in a water glass......unless of course a strict definition of how these energies are produced, then perhaps parity can not only be achieved but real work or energy can be extracted from a reasonable sized apparatus by manipulating the fundamental informational structures of the universe. That seems like 22nd century science at the soonest, if ever.....edd

I am curious as to your intent...what gasses and toward what end product you wish to achieve?

hello, there have been built by MIT researchers and others, vacuum tubes without using heaters to activate a cathode of thorium coated metal to produce current. A seemingly simple crystalline coating of pure diamond on a metal substrate introduced into a standard amplifying tube seems to work and create a useable current flow with which to produce a "filamentless" tube, without the heat and power consumption of a filament, longer proposed lifespan, and of course a vast improvement in overall amplifiier efficiency....I read about this in S.A. magazine's October 1992 issue....would it be possible to get a diamond coated piece of metal, say a 1/8" copper rod, about an inch long, and put it into an evacuated glass vessel surrounded by a cylindrical piece of uncoated metal (a plate in tube-terms) and then see if current will flow from the coated rod (cathode) through the vacuum to the plate using a normal cathode to plate potential in the 300 volt range? This is what the article claims to have been done.....has anyone out there tried this? Is anyone interested in discussing the viability of a project to see if the claim can be verified.?...thanks, edd

what you seem to have here is what resembles a voltage tripler or quadrupler wired into a resonant coil apparatus...and yes, it will generate electricity, and it will be powerful enough to drive a small earphone...properly tuned, and with some re-jiggering of the components I quickly surveyed, you might pick up a local AM radio station within a few dozen miles...so technically you are correct in the "free energy" claim. This circuit was the basis of the early wireless "crystal" radios and I built one myself as a child with an oatmeal box and a razor blade/pencil lead assy. as a detector...I never picked up any radio stations, but I would sit and listen for hours adjusting the position of the pencil point on the razor blade. All I ever heard was a soft staticy background noise, and would of course hear a loud static when an electrical storm was in the area.....the caps you want I suppose are to "tune" the coil in to the 8HZ VLF (very low frequency) that has been reported and monitored by specialists in the field. A good report of their activities is on U-tube. (google sprites) It seems "sprite" or fuzzy lightning springs up from the clouds, in a sort of reaction to overy-large downward strikes......and that this sets up a resonant field around the planet between the top of the cloud and the ionosphere top layer. Since there is ligtning striking constantly somewhere on the planet, the energy is continuous.I have also read a recent bio of Nikola Tesla and how he became convinced, sadly to his reputation at the time, that energy could be sent without wires using "nodes" at certain point around the globe....perhaps even losing him the opportunity to be known as the real inventor of radio, as he was doing what Marconi was doing before the italian got the credit for the invention, but didn't consider it important enough to bother with as he was after the bigger fish of wireless power delivery, not what he considered a more trivial enterprise of mere communications. Poor tesla. He squandered his fame and fortune on a bad bet, unsupported by the evidence he had at his disposal at the time. And he did have a huge reputation as he pretty much invented (useable) AC motors and the current AC power system. The poor man had to end up begging JP Morgan for money for financing one flop after the next of his wireless power fantasy......to the point of (perhaps) faking positive results to attain credibility for further investment....I cannot advise as to what size caps you are needing, but the resonant frequency you may be aiming at is 8HZ. So you will have to find the formula for resonant frequency with wiki and then start with figuring out what inductance the main coil is....then add that to the formula to get a correct cap size for 8HZ.....even during an nearby electrical storm I suspect you couldn't get more than a few milliwatts of sporatic power out of a refined and efficient setup, plus you run the risk of lightning striking your antenna.......but good luck....edd

I have just started to try to understand the bayes theorem, whatever the precise meaning....and thank you for an interesting thread, but the first cartoon image at the top of the thread is of two people wondering if the sun has exploded in the middle of the night......well, if it merely exploded that would seem to be unrecognizable for 8 minutes...but if it disappeared..."poof"... we would immediately know, as the speed of gravity in newton's equations require an instantaneous rate, thus, immediately the earth would fly off it's normal orbit .....as the gravity of an exploded sun wouldn't change much, but a disappeared sun's would, although the day side of the planet would continue to see the sun for a short while as we flew off towards deep space.....it seems an effect of this rapid release of gravitational force would be a radical change in the ocean's tides with tsunamis as a primary effect. I don't see yet as to where the rolling dice come into play....please explain ....edd

I agree with the topic "if I can imagine it, it is possible".....on both phases....sometime a "real" thing can be built using a thought experiment as a guide in physical construction. This is how Tesla supposedly invented the AC motor with his imaginings of a rotating magnetic field....so that is possible. When the other side of the subject is considered, it still remains true,....examining the statement, using a strict semantic definition of "if I can imagine it, it is possible", then the statement is true still as reads...."If I can imagine it, it is possible... to imagine it"...this includes any sort of perpetual motion machine, flying pigs, etc. In a legal-istic fancy footwork style, the thread starter used a partial statement, of which people filled in with what is presumed the author meant....very funny....and explains the puzzling success of the advertising industry, and why propaganda works......edd

yes, we are a product of our animal heritage, and morals are the quasi-instinctual obeyance to social herarchies, such as alpha male/alpha female, tribal affiliations and hunting techniques which require organization of a definite rule-set to increase chances of success....even bacterial colonies have a primitive structure of the outside layer of cells, protecting the insides of the cellular mass....an early proto-altruistic stage, adopted and modified for use, then eventually identified as a "moral concept" when sentient life became capable of affixing labels it's our own behavior....the onus against gay marriage is a result of most of human history being of a condition of humanity hanging on to a precarious existence, which required all people to reproduce as much as possible as the chances of a newborn reaching sexual maturity long enough to reproduce were not good enough to "waste" sexual energy or attention on relations that do not end in pregnancy....now that we have 7 billion plus people on the planet, the danger to the enviornment and humanity itself is actually increased by pregnancy-generating relationships....we, and the entire world would be wise to adopt gay marriage as an acknowledgement that such relationships increase our survival chances, and those of other species on the planet, let alone the atmosphere itself. ....edd

I hope I haven't offended anyone with these rather obvious fake theories such as "nano-bang", "informational black hole" and "conservation of information"...including the moderators. I read the etiquite section and there seems to be some onus against putting out unsupported theories...of course I am only offering them as thought experiments, and as a means of addressing topics with raw logic, not scholarly reductionism and I have no math to support anything in regards to them. I hope they cause nothing more serious than rolled eyes and a "ooh, that poor man" or two. The tendency towards athiesm is inherent in my overall push to describe the universe's beginnings as cold, logical information. I feel that is perhaps the way the universe started, and emotion, feelings and all beings, flesh or spiritual, came later. Cold as an electron or warm as a kitten, all came from the same resevoir of information, logic being the one way filter that allows some things from the "well" to pass through to extant physical reality, while sequestering away thing that violate logic's strict regulations to an imaginary state of potential existence. Electrons and kittens are on the OK list..... But there is a fly in my ointment, in that ......if matter is a condensate of energy, energy is an discription from mathematics, mathematics is supported and allowed to function by logic.....what and how did logic get created? If , as I think, it rose up from "the chaos" from random associations of reduced entropic regions within the entirety of chaos, where did (the concept of) chaos come from? Is this the primary default minimum, with nothing before it to create it? If this is the irreducible minimum of our universe, then that leads to an admission of the concept of a divine being....Is David Mustaine correct in his assertion that "chaos rules!" perhaps more that he is aware? I see it as "chaos allows"...if it ruled , it wouldn't have allowed upstarts to appear(free will) in its domain, challenging this rule. Who knows, perhaps it has a sense of humour about the situation...if an advanced concept such as humour or empathy can be attached to chaos, then the idea of a "creator" looks more likely.....but if chaos can be attributed to have come from some more fundamental state ...then the question of the existence of a "creator" still remains......regardless of the existence of a creator or not, I see our universe as a random bubble of reduced entropy within a sea of self-negating chaos....edd

free will doesn't exist in absolute terms, you are correct in that assesment, however, we have as much free will as possible given the circumstance. These restrictions can be local, such as being in prison, or physically restrained, or global, and the limit is the minimum amount any sentient being is restricted to, that is by the "conservation of information" requirement as listed above. This goes hand in hand with the concept of reality itself....reality isn't 100% real, but real enough for the seeker of truth to proceed foward in the search for intellecual and spiritual enlightment. It is the car analogy...sure the car is sputtering and gets poor mileage, but gets you to the grocery store nonetheless, so you won't starve (evolution continues). Plus you had enough free will to refute my assertion that we do have some measure of free will, albeit in absolutist terms.... You don't have all the money in the world, right? This doesn't mean you have no money.....edd

to go deeper into the specifics of the origin of free will, I postulate that the underlying logic of the universe limits what can actually appear in it physically or even intellectually by restraining what can appear informationally. It isn't hard to imagine it denying us flying pigs, or broken eggs that re-assemble themselves, but I believe the same limitations of the "informational well" can be applied to our most precious gift, that of thought. You might imagine you can think of any number of illogical happenings or perpetual motion machines, and that they are indeed, your own imaginary creations. I say any thought in your head or word out of your mouth, was constructed informationally in, and a component of, the theoretical engine of mathematics eons ago. Furthermore, (most) all information possible in this universe appeared within the original singularity before it was set free by the dimensions (big bang), or else it could not appear here and now. I call this my "law of conservation of information"(1). Now we certainly can think of new ways for flying pigs to look, and re-assembling eggs of a color or some other small detail being original to us, so isn't that a violation of my principle? No. All possible information was within the singularity. No matter how odd or supposedly new your flaming thought might get, was within the proto-universe's total informational content, both of logical and illogical halves. So we do have free will, but choice limited to the nearly infinite expanses of possibilities the universe was born with. You could live a trillion years and not run out of new, original material....accessing what there was 13 billion years ago. But, the universe is still cranking out new information.....the original PI did it's work, and post big bang, clones appears everywhere, spread out in quasi physical form as unrestrained informational generators...(hence, low level - no more big bangs, please) ...that are evidenced by expression by every (discreet) point in space putting out virtual particles, or "dark energy", which creates the fabric of space, and which seems to be pushing the universe apart. There is an intellectual component to this too...as new information is being added, so increases the vast informational possibilities of the universe's expression via your mind and others, perhaps even new physical factors. So, even if you could somehow achieve god-hood and know the entire informational content of the universe (shades of Kurt Godel), you would have to play catch-up forever as the universe continues it readout of the original algorithms, delivering new information at the speed of gravity all around you(via the clones). I use the "speed of gravity" as a euphemism of a very high rate....although that is something that has always puzzled me. Newton's gravity equations require an instantaneous speed for gravity....yet einstein says nothing can communicate faster than light in space....seem as bit of a problem there. I agree that gravity waves are restrained to C, but apparently not gravity straight line forces... but this is OT.... Everything I have just written and you have just read is chosen from a vast storehouse of knowledge, derived from information, and limited to the restraint of the law of "conservation of information", with it's open-ended, and all but limitless, machinery of mathematics, guided by logic, or else I couldn't write it and you couldn't read it. (1- the law of conservation of information has a caveat in that new information has been continuously added to the total informational content of the universe since the big bang, but a minor amount as compared to the original content, to the degree of insignificance)......edd

hello. Why anything? This includes such ephemeral things such as free will,along with matter / energy, etc....as a starting point, a theory of everything is a first step. Mine is information. The idea of the universe as a computer generated hologram from another universe is not a problem, the problem is.... who created the universe that these supposed aliens lived in? In the view of taking responsibility for our own universe, providing an "in house" theory and not using the typical dodges to avoid dealing with the question, I see the universe as mathematics itself, in the process of finishing an equation set that began as a process of informational evolution. This process culminated in the big bang, when informational derivatives became baroque enough to allow a complete description of matter, energy, fields, and the dimensions. The order of that listing has the dimensions as last as they provided the "vessel" (space) for all other descriptions to be expressed. Up to the point of the "release" by dimensionality, the singularity in "the void" was accumulating information. I call this an "informational black hole" Mathematics had to start somewhere and and I see it starting with a "one", a default minimum expressed as "one void". What is the usual description of the singularity? ....as a point...and what is the geometry of a point?...as sphere...and what is the relation of any sphere, regardless of size, to it own diameter/circumference? PI.....yes, and endless series of numbers, going on forever. A perfect supplier of any and all information.....this concept is a far-fetched extrapolation, but unless some divine creature zapped us into existence, spiritual or otherwise, (both dodges), some form of "how did something come from nothing?" must answered first by presuming a theoretical (mathematical?) existence supported by an equally complex logic-set. This logic set also having evolved in a pre-mathematical state arising from the chaos. This is my first entry in the site and don't want to overdue this rather wordy text...but I see how even free will is constrained by the mathematics of reality and that in turn is constrained by the dictates of logic....and up to this point, the great engine of mathematics has not fathomed the origins of logic, and that desire to know one's own origin is expressed in sentient beings such as ourselves, since we are a component of mathematics, as the desire that is driving and has always driven life on earth to struggle and evolve towards enlightenment....and the continuation of time itself towards this end.....next questions ..what is a point and how does that relate to dark energy? (what I call "nano-bangs")....... and is PI infinte?,,,,,,edd.