"Une Philosophie Numérique des Univers"

Michael Nicolaidis, Research Director, French National Research Center (CNRS), Grenoble, France

Abstract: The starting point of the vision developed in this book is the observation that all information collected by our own sensory systems and those which we built to observe nature, come from the interactions of the particles composing these systems with various other particles (photons, electrons....). These interactions represent the behavior of the particles. Consequently, we do not have information allowing us to determine the intimate nature of the (meta-)objects which produce this behavior. This nature does not have any impact on the processes that take place in the universe and as a consequence only the behavior of elementary particles has importance.

By considering that this behavior is the product of a process, such as a computation, which takes place in a substrate external to our universe (meta-substrate), we eliminate a perception of the particles which, as "material" objects, must behave in a deterministic manner, and we make intuitive the "strange" behaviors described by quantum mechanics.

This vision eliminates also the perception of a space and a time which would exist as primary ingredients of the universe. We end to a vision in which space, time and their geometry are emerging from the process of evolution of the state of elementary particles and the laws of interactions that govern this process.

On the basis of this vision we prove formally that the geometry described by special relativity is the consequence of a condition which governs the laws of the interactions of elementary particles. As a consequence, special relativity and any laws of interactions compatible with it collapse automatically into a single theory. This is true today for the quantum theories of electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions. Also, thanks to this result, the success of the current efforts of physicists concerning the development of a quantum theory of gravitation not only could unify this interaction with the three others, but will lead automatically to the fusion of the theories of interactions with the two branches of relativity, special and general, into a single theory.

As a by-product of the vision proposed, it appears that the concept of computing systems would become part of the very foundations of modern physics.

The presentation will be given at a level accessible to physicists, engineers and researchers in computer science and other technology branches.

About the speaker: Michael Nicolaidis is Research Director at the French National Research Center and Chief Technical Officer in iRoC Technologies since January 2001. He was leader of the Reliable Integrated Systems Group at TIMA Laboratory until December 31 2000. His research interests include VLSI testing, DFT, on-line testing, fault tolerant design, reliability issues in very deep submicron technologies, fault tolerant approaches for nano-technologies, fundamental physics, and philosophy. He published more than 150 papers, edited one book and several journal special issues, and authored 18 patents.

He developed the memory BIST synthesis approach and the programmable memory BIST architecture licensed to two leaders of the EDA industry.

He was the Program Chair or General Chair of the 1997 and 1998 and 1999 IEEE VLSI Test Symposium. He was founder of the IEEE International On-Line Testing Workshop and General Co-chair from 1995 to 2003. He was General Co-chair of the 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 IEEE International On-Line Testing Symposium, and Vice Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Test Technology Technical Council (TTTC).

He received twice the Best Paper Award of the Design and Test in Europe Conference, and once the Best paper Award of the IEEE VLSI Test Symposium. He also received the Meritorious Service Award of the IEEE Computer Society. He is a Golden Core member of the IEEE Computer Society.

He is co-founder of iRoC Technologies and its CTO since January 2001. He authored the book "Une Philosophie Numérique des Univers", proposing a unifiying vision of modern physics inspired from information systems.