Ted Zell, our consultant from the math department was able to give us a bit of an executive summary as to what our lizards are doing down there on Alpha (side note, their intellectual pursuits seems to have slipped a bit on Tangent).
From what I could make out it sounds like they are doing some serious math. I felt like an idiot in there, I know enough of most of our pursuits to at least follow along, whether it is the biology, physics, or even the coding of Alpha, but this was beyond me.
Janice was with me on that, she looked fascinated, but bewildered. Adit seemed to be soaking it in the most.
Anyway they seem to be doing theoretical math. Math in multiple dimensions. Not just our standard three, or even four, but six, ten, 20. Pure insanity math. Spaces and manifolds and stuff. Pretty esoteric.
Ted even said as much. Beyond pure intellectual pursuit the only real reason to do such high level math is to explain some of what we see on the macro and micro levels, areas where Newtonian physics fall down.
Quote of the day was Adit, “so we’ve got a simulated organism equipped with proofs for theories on quantum fields and a multiverse while they live purely in a digital world.”
I have to admit that hit me a bit jarringly. I forget that all the Alphans from the now extinct jelly fish elephant like things to the lizards are really just zeros and ones. And here they were working out math that could help us understand better our analog reality.
Trying to sound like a project manager I chipped in with a concern as to whether or not their science advancements could soon outstrip our processing power, no matter how many upgrades we get (which Kaitlin now has occurring everyday at 11:00, shortly after the morning’s component shipment – I don’t even need to ask for money these day, Greystle just signs the checks without asking questions).
The answer is not yet, simply because they only are theorists, our friends are doing math that Ted says would fascinated Ng himself, but they don’t have equipment yet. They haven’t gone electronic. They haven’t even gone to smelting metals yet, something the much more primitive primates up north have been doing off and on for generations now. Until they go beyond theoretical we are in good shape, but as soon as they actually begin to compute and study with something more than their amazing brains we’ve got an issue.
I think I’ve got a pretty good reason now for asking permission from Greystle to slow the simulations down a bit. These lizard Alphans may just be a few generations away from making this entire project beyond our technical capabilities.