Simulating space and time

Abstract: This chapter asks if a virtual space-time could appear to those within it as our space-time does to us. A processing grid network is proposed to underlie not just matter and energy, but also space and time. The suggested "screen" for our familiar three dimensional world is a hyper-sphere surface simulated by a grid network. Light and matter then travel, or are transmitted, in the "directions" of the grid architecture. The processing sequences of grid nodes create time, as the static states of movies run together emulate events. Yet here what exists are not the static states, but the dynamic processing between them. Quantum collapse is the irreversible event that gives time its direction. In this model, empty space is null processing, directions are node links, time is processing cycles, light is a processing wave, objects are wave tangles and energy is the processing transfer rate. It describes a world where empty space is not empty, space warps, time dilates, and everything began when this virtual universe "booted up".