Editing 2664: Cloud Swirls

There are planets.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet] A lot of them, even.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_exoplanets] Like our planet, for instance.[https://phl.upr.edu/projects/earth-similarity-index-esi]  

 

In this comic, [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] theorize that complicated cloud formations occur naturally on other planets in other solar systems. On planets with no observers to look at the clouds closely, our universe, or the simulation thereof, might not afford to render a visual depiction of the atmosphere in higher quality. Meteorologists and physicists on Earth might notice that the exoplanet atmosphere does not obey Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics equations, but instead reflects low-quality skimping on fluid dynamics calculations. The foregoing would make sense if the Universe is actually simulated by a computer (a 43% probability[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA5YuwvJkpQ&t=20m]) and the beings that are running the physics simulator, or have coded our universe, wanted to speed things up.  

** For one thing, this would not only depend on a species's intelligence but also on its knowledge of physics; e.g., humans did not develop the Navier-Stokes equations right after evolving large enough brains to conceive and understand them. Even coding a computer program to detect sight-having life would be difficult, at least for a computer program only looking at the positions and velocities of atoms, electrons, and photons; for example, a blue photon hitting a retinal molecule in a cone cell, causing it to change shape, which triggers a signal transduction cascade that sends a nervous signal to the optical cortex somewhat resembles an ultraviolet photon hitting a DNA strand, leading to the creation of a thymine dimer whose detection by DNA-repairing enzymes triggers a signal transduction cascade that increases the production of melanin, but only one counts as sight.

***Even if the advanced civilization on another planet does not have such powerful telescopes yet, even a low-resolution (in terms of that planet's entire solar system being one pixel) spectrometer would be enough to reveal that something is up with the fluid dynamics simulations on that planet. Observers light-years away could deduce how much condensed water vapor there is in the atmosphere by calculating the atmosphere's absorbance in a wavelength where condensed water has a low but detectable absorptivity and everything else in that planet's atmosphere either has a negligible absorptivity or can be compensated for, and then one can deduce how compact the clouds are from that and the absorbance of a wavelength where condensed water has a high absorptivity and everything else in that planet's atmosphere either has a negligible absorptivity or can be compensated for. (Actually, in order to calculate the amount and compactlygroupedness of condensed water in the atmosphere from the raw numbers/direct measurements, the scientists would have to know not only the absoprtivity of condensed water suspended in air as clouds but also characteristics of the planet such as its radius and the thickness of its atmosphere. There are also other complicated factors, such as that some of the aerosolized water in clouds is in the form of solid ice, not liquid water. However, the scientists would still notice if the raw numbers from the more rudimentary observational equipment suddenly changed the second they switched on a more powerful telescope, so the following point still stands.) If the computer simulating the Universe did not switch to the more precise simulation of the planet's atmosphere in time for the scientists to only see spectrographs of the planet's atmosphere rendered with precise calculations, then if the scientists later developed a more powerful telescope, like the one described earlier, and then pointed it at the planet, either they would see poorly-rendered clouds and know that the Universe is simulated by a computer that skimps on the fluid dynamics calculations for the atmospheres of certain planets, or the measurements from transit spectrography would suddenly change, so the scientists would know that something weird was going on—although probably not exactly what. This is important because it is more feasible for a society to develop low-resolution transit spectrography quickly enough to catch the computer simulating the Universe off-guard than it would be for a society to develop the technology required for a telescope advanced enough to look at the clouds of a planet in another solar system with high enough resolution to determine whether the atmosphere is simulated by a computer that is skimping on the fluid dynamics calculations quickly enough to catch the computer simulating the Universe off-guard. However, either could conceivably catch the computer simulating the Universe off-guard because it would be difficult for a computer to deduce whether a planet has life and how technologically advanced the life of any planet that has life is when the only raw data for the computer to work with are the positions and velocities of atoms, electrons, and photons.

Of course, most people do not think that the Universe is a simulation, but society does not know that it isn't a simulation with absolute certainty. There is a direct relationship between the question of the {{w|simulation hypothesis}} in {{w|metaphysics}} and {{w|Pascal's wager}} in {{w|theism}}, ''i.e.,'' whether God(s) exist(s).

Megan proposes an additional theory that the universe is just about making cool swirly clouds, and that the presence of life to observe these clouds is a bothersome coincidence. This goes against the theory that the Universe must not care about making cool swirly clouds since it wants to skimp on the fluid dynamics calculations. Even among followers of the simulation hypothesis, ascribing sentiment or emotion to the entire universe is usually considered to be in jest, because of the dissimilarities between sentient beings and cosmologically distant sets of galaxies.{{Actual citation needed}}

:[Cueball and Megan looking out at a landscape of clouds]