Digital Mechanics

An Informational Process Based on Reversible Universal Cellular Automata

Edward Fredkin
Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA

This paper is written from the perspective of a computer scientist and addressed to theoretical physicists. As a consequence it may seem somewhat unusual, but rest assured, everything is really quite simple! The point of this paper is that she study of certain phenomena from computer science suggests that there are computer systems (cellular automata) that may be appropriate as models for microscopic physical phenomena. Cellular automata are now being used to model varied physical phenomena normally modelled by wave equations, fluid dynamics, Ising models, etc. We hypothesize that there will be found a single cellular automaton rule that models all of microscopic physics; and models it exactly. We call this field DM, for digital mechanics.