Physicist Stephen Wolfram believes that once we figure out a framework that integrates general relativity, quantum mechanics, and everything else we know about physics, and find the right things to plug into it, we will have a model of our universe. In other words, he is working on a theory of everything, and because it is 2020, he is live streaming his ideas on Twitch.

Wolfram's presentation is unrelated to PC gaming at best, but his ideas are fun for anyone interested in computing to think about: enjoy the occasional tangent.

The crux of Wolfram's proposal is the fact that when a simple rule set is applied to a system over and over again, some very interesting things emerge. For example, in The Game of Life (created by mathematician John Horton Conway, who sadly died last week after contracting a coronavirus), one only needs to set a few simple rules about how cells on the grid should behave, and if in the correct starting state they move or execute any algorithm.

Similarly, Wolfram theorizes that the structure of the universe, like everything "in" the universe, arises from simple underlying rules that apply over and over again. Wolfram is not saying that the universe is a computer (i.e., the universe was "constructed"), but he is saying that the universe has computational properties. This is nothing new to his controversial ideas, but with the help of his students Jonathan Gollard and Max Piskunov, he has pushed his theory further than ever before and says he never expected such excellent theoretical results.

"It's a more elegant replication of what I did in the 1990s," he says. And out of small, unstructured rules came hints of space, time, relativity, gravity, and quantum mechanics."

In other words, the laws of physics as we know them are the result of the repetition of simple rules, and those rules are not "coded" into the simulation. The rules actually used merely dictate how abstract relationships between abstract points change and grow. With the right rules, Wolfram argues, we have a model of the universe.

"The idea that there could be rudimentary computational rules that would successfully reproduce the entire physical universe seems at first to be somewhat absurd," Gollard writes. Moreover, if there is even a remote possibility that such a rule exists, it would be a little embarrassing not to search for it; the purpose of the Wolfram Physics project is to carry out this search."

If you are interested (although understanding the basic ideas of general relativity and quantum field theory can help), start with Wolfram's introductory article for non-mathematicians.

Wolfram's ideas are interesting to me, even though I don't have a PhD in mathematics or physics, but as you might guess, Twitch streams are not a traditional vehicle for theoretical discourse. Wired writes, "Many traditional physicists would consider [Wolfram's project] folly." That doesn't mean his ideas are wrong, but whether they are groundbreaking or even meaningful remains to be seen. To be truly exciting for the physics community, the theory would need to predict something testable.

Wolfram and team hope that amateur physicists will be interested and willing to help run larger-scale simulations and create virtual reality visualizers of cosmic models. If nothing else, the project will produce some pretty cool wireframe art.