Paul Davies on an Ultimate Explanation Part 4/5

[metacosmos]

Paul Davies is the best physicist-theologian of our times, his book "The mind of God" is the best Theology book ever written because he incorporates the last findings in Physics.

[JayeHK]

Anyone know what the 10 to the power of 122 bits of information means? Fascinating.

[heartthehorse]

he is saying the maximum amount of information the universe can compute is 1 x 10 to 122. that is a 10 with

[heartthehorse]

sorry continued from above.... So that is a 10 with 122 zeros behind it, a very big number. Although you have to wonder how much a "bit" of information would be in the physical universe? Surely more than a single atom, im sure there are more than 10 to the 122 atoms in the ocean.

[riversonthemoon]

"im sure there are more than 10 to the 122 atoms in the ocean"

Actually, the number of atoms in the known universe was determined to be 10^80 by WMAP.

The 10^122 number, refers to an ensemble of pure numbers that arise naturally from cosmological parameters, first noticed by Scott Funkhouser (love that name!). You can get a sense of what it refers to from this paper:

arxiv. org / ftp / physics papers / 0611 / 0611115. pdf

[heartthehorse]

Cool thanks for that, im not so good on the chemistry front, a bit of avogadro's number and i could have worked that one out...

[riversonthemoon]

You're welcome. The link here doesn't work, so I posted the correct link on your channel page.

[riversonthemoon]

I meant to respond to you earlier but I forgot. Check out the link in my response to heartthehorse.

[JayeHK]

Thanks. However, I can't seem to access that pdf. Tried with space, underscore and hyphen between "physics" and "papers" but all no good.

[riversonthemoon]

I sent you the link via PM.

[zarathustrads]

I am not educated in physics, but I did read Paul Davies book The Mind of God. This really addressed and clarified many issues within that book. It was very good. I don't now where you found this, but thanks for the post.

[riversonthemoon]

Your welcome!

It was a talk he gave at Beyond Belief 2006. A google search should lead you to the science network which streams the whole conference.

:-)

[heartthehorse]

122 zeros after it, a very big number. I would like to know how much of the universe fits into a "bit" of information? Surely it mus be more than a single atom.