
Physicists Uncover Strange Numbers in Particle Collisions - danielmorozoff
https://www.wired.com/2016/11/physicists-uncover-strange-numbers-particle-collisions/
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TheOtherHobbes
Also on Quanta. [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161115-strange-numbers-
foun...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161115-strange-numbers-found-in-
particle-collisions/)

This is completely fascinating.

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Xcelerate
As someone who is normally disappointed by the way science news is written for
a lay audience, that Quanta article is extremely well done!

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aaroninsf
All such results seem to me unsurprising if you consider the proposition that
the substrate of our reality is optimized computation of some kind...

...i.e. that we live in a simulation.

I thought the same thing following a thread into a rabbit hole about Bohmian
mechanics. Again it seemed that the paradoxes are not so paradoxical if you
assume you're just on a computed substrate.

Surely there is someone accumulating such circumstantial evidence,
somewhere...

(De rigeur Bostrom-style musing: if we're in such a simulation, my primary
goal as an AI, were I implemented such that I can set my own goals, might
reasonably often be to 'jail break' and break out into the frame universe.

An intrinsically computational AI is more like a poem than a hurricane. Which
could come in very handy if survival and replication is your ultimate goal...)

~~~
goldfeld
It is somehow easier to believe the simulation is run by a mad scientist in
another reality than by a supreme, spiritual force?

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conistonwater
Note: _strange numbers_ in the title means _periods_ : integrals of rational
functions with rational coefficients over sets defined by polynomial
inequalities with rational coefficients
([http://www.ihes.fr/~maxim/TEXTS/Periods.pdf](http://www.ihes.fr/~maxim/TEXTS/Periods.pdf)).
They are pretty cool even in a purely mathematical sense: nobody knows if e is
a period or not ([http://mathoverflow.net/questions/180035/what-are-reasons-
to...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/180035/what-are-reasons-to-believe-
that-e-is-not-a-period)).

~~~
rocqua
I came across the original article before, couldn't find anything on what
defines these periods. Thanks for that quick explanation and that link!

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pajop
see Francis Brown's arXiV papers on Feynman amplitudes and motivic periods:
[https://arxiv.org/find/math-
ph,math/1/au:+Brown_F/0/1/0/all/...](https://arxiv.org/find/math-
ph,math/1/au:+Brown_F/0/1/0/all/0/1)

