Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.

"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.

"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"

House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."

Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.

"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."

Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Trying to Make a Deal Watch Video

House Speaker John Boehner Proposes 'Plan B' on Taxes Watch Video

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Deal Might Be Within Reach Watch Video

Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.

Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.

Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.

The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.

But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.

"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.

Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.

"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.

Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."

"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.

"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."

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2013 Smart Guide: New maps to rein in cosmic inflation

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

We're about to get a better grasp of one of the biggest ideas in the universe: inflation. The first maps of the cosmos from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite are due out in early 2013. They should help us to hone descriptions of how, after the big bang, the universe grew from smaller than a proton into a vast expanse in less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

The early universe was a featureless soup of hot plasma that somehow grew into the dense galaxy clusters and cosmic voids we know today. On a large scale, regions far apart from each other should look very different, according to the laws of thermodynamics. But studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - the first light to be released, some 300,000 years after the big bang - show that the universe still looks virtually the same in all directions.

To explain this unlikely sameness, physicists invoked inflation: since all points in the universe were once next-door neighbours, the idea is that they blew apart so quickly that they couldn't forget about each other. Data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001, bolstered a key prediction of inflation, that the universe's structure was seeded by quantum fluctuations in space-time.

Stephen Hawking recently told New Scientist that WMAP's evidence for inflation was the most exciting development in physics during his career. But a best-fit model for what drove the exponential expansion, when it began and how long it lasted, hasn't been agreed. The WMAP data also revealed some surprises, such as inexplicable patterns in the CMB. So cosmologists have been anxiously awaiting Planck's higher-resolution maps to set the record straight. The Planck team will release its first cosmological results from 15 months' worth of data in March.

In addition, the Planck results will help refine figures for how much dark energy, dark matter and normal matter make up the universe. Planck might also record the first direct signs of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Not bad for a probe that's already half dead - one of Planck's two detectors stopped working in January. The entire craft will be shuttered in August.

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UBS to pay $1.5B in fines for rate manipulation

Updated 4:30 a.m.

GENEVA Switzerland's UBS AG agreed Wednesday to pay some $1.5 billion in fines to international regulators following a probe into the rigging of a key global interest rate.

In admitting to fraud, Switzerland's largest bank became the second bank, after Britain's Barclays PLC, to settle over the rate-rigging scandal. The fine, which will be paid to authorities in the U.S., Britain and Switzerland, also comes just over a week after HSBC PLC agreed to pay nearly $2 billion for alleged money laundering.

The settlement caps a tough year for UBS and the reputation of the global banking industry. As well as being ensnared in the industry-wide investigation into alleged manipulations of the benchmark LIBOR interest rate, short for London interbank offered rate, UBS has seen its reputation suffer in a London trial into a multibillion dollar trading scandal and ongoing tax evasion probes.

As a result of the fines, litigation, unwinding of real estate investments, restructuring and other costs, UBS said it expects to post a fourth quarter net loss of between $2.2-2.7 billion.

Nevertheless, the Zurich-based bank maintained that it "remains one of the best capitalized banks in the world."

Other banks are expected to be fined for their involvement in the LIBOR scandal. LIBOR, which is a self-policing system and relies on information that global banks submit to a British banking authority, is important because it is used to set the interest rates on trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages and credit cards.

UBS characterized the probes as "industry-wide investigations into the setting of certain benchmark rates across a range of currencies."

The UBS penalty is more than triple the $450 million in fines imposed by American and British regulators in June on Barclays for submitting false information between 2005 and 2009 to manipulate the LIBOR rates. Those fines exposed a scandal that led to the departure of Chief Executive Bob Diamond and the announcement that Chairman Marcus Agius would step down at the end of the year.

In accepting the fines, UBS said some of its employees tried to rig the LIBOR rate in several currencies, but that its Japan unit, where much of the manipulation took place, entered a plea to one count of wire fraud in an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.

UBS said some of its personnel had "engaged in efforts to manipulate submissions for certain benchmark rates to benefit trading positions" and that some employees had "colluded with employees at other banks and cash brokers to influence certain benchmark rates to benefit their trading positions."

UBS added that "inappropriate directions" had been submitted that were "in part motivated by a desire to avoid unfair and negative market and media perceptions during the financial crisis."

Britain's financial regulator called the misconduct by UBS "extensive and broad" with the rate-fixing carried out from UBS offices in London and Zurich.

Different desks were responsible for different rate submissions. At least 2,000 requests for inappropriate submissions were documented -- an unquantifiable number of oral requests, which by their nature would not be documented, were also made, the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority said.

"Manipulation was also discussed in internal open chat forums and group emails, and was widely known," the FSA said. "At least 45 individuals including traders, managers and senior managers were involved in, or aware of, the practice of attempting to influence submissions."

Sergio Ermotti, who was appointed CEO of UBS AG in November 2012 in the wake of a major trading scandal, said the misconduct does not reflect the bank's values or standards.

"We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of the firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity," he said.

With more than $2.4 trillion in invested assets, UBS is one of the world's largest managers of private wealth assets. At last count, the bank had 63,745 employees in 57 countries. It has said it aims for a headcount of 54,000 in 2015.

Along with Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, UBS is on the list of the 29 "global systemically important banks" that the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements, the central bank for central banks, considers too big to fail.

It's not the first time that UBS has fallen afoul of regulators. Notably, in 2009, U.S. authorities fined UBS $780 million in 2009 for helping U.S. citizens avoid paying taxes.

The U.S. government has since been pushing Switzerland to loosen its rules on banking secrecy and has been trying to shed its image as a tax haven, signing deals with the United States, Germany and Britain to provide greater assistance to foreign tax authorities seeking information on their citizens' accounts.

In April, Ermotti called Switzerland's tax disputes with the United States and some European nations "an economic war" putting thousands of jobs at risk.

And in September 2011, the bank announced more than $2 billion in losses and blamed a 32-year-old rogue trader, Kweku Adoboli, at its London office for Britain's biggest-ever fraud at a bank.

Britain's financial regulator fined UBS, saying its internal controls were inadequate to prevent Adoboli, a relatively inexperienced trader, from making vast and risky bets. Adoboli has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

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Newtown Settles In for Prayerful, Somber Christmas

Residents of Sandy Hook, Conn., gather every year under an enormous tree in the middle of town to sing carols and light the tree. The tree is lit this year, too, but the scene beneath it is starkly different.

The tree looms over hundreds of teddy bears and toys, but they are for children who will never receive them. The ornaments are adorned with names and jarringly recent birth dates.

Wreaths with pine cones and white ribbons hang near the tree, one each for a life lost. A small statue of an angel child sleeps among a sea of candles.

A steady flow of well-wishers, young and old, tearfully comes to cry, pray, light candles, leave gifts and share hugs and stories.

CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the massacre at Sandy Hook.

The Christmas season is a normally joyful time for this tight-knit village, but in the wake of a shooting rampage, holiday decorations have given way this year to memorial signs. And instead of cars with Christmas trees on top, there are media vans with satellites.

Connie Koch has lived in Newtown for nine years. She lives directly behind Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself. Earlier that Friday morning, he had also killed his mother at home.

President Obama on Newtown Shooting: 'We Must Change' Watch Video

Koch said the shocked town, which includes the Village of Sandy Hook, is experiencing a notably different Christmas this year.

"It's more somber, much more time spent in prayer for our victims' families and our friends that have lost loved ones," she said as she stood near the base of the tree.

CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.

Her family has been touched by the tragedy is multiple ways.

"My daughter, she lost her child that she babysat for for six years," she said, holding back tears. "And for her friend who lost her mother. And for my dear friend who lost one of her friends in the school, one of the aides.

"It's hard. And there will be much prayer on Christmas morning for these people, for our community."

Koch said her community always rallies in the face of tragedy, but the term "hits close to home" resonates this time more than ever before. She says the only way to make it through is one day at a time.

"It's all you can do, one hour at a time," Koch said. "For me, I don't even want to wake up in the morning because I don't want to have to face it again. You feel like it's still just a dream and with the funerals starting, it's becoming more real. It's becoming more final."

Another Newtown parent, Adam Zuckerman, stood by the makeshift memorial with a roll of red heart stickers with the words, "In Our" above a drawing of the Sandy Hook Elementary School welcome sign. He was selling the stickers to collect money for a Sandy Hook victims' fund.

"It's a lot," he said of the events of the past few days. "We don't know how it's going to affect our community, but I feel very strongly that I needed to do something to keep it positive, to keep this community positive."

Zuckerman's 20-year-old stepdaughter came home from college for winter break the night before the shooting. As a high school student, she worked in one of the town's popular toy stores.

"She knew a lot of the kids," he said of his daughter. "Their parents brought them in over the years. We have other friends who have lost family here and good friends who are dear friends with the principal of the school. … It's pretty rough."

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App for quizzing your way to being a mastermind

Software that harnesses principles of cognitive science aims to turn you into a grade-A student

YOU are walking down the street when your phone buzzes. "What is the capital of Maryland?" it asks you. You know the answer but you can't quite grasp it until all of a sudden you remember: "Annapolis". The question prompted your brain just in time.

That is the scenario envisaged by the makers of software Cerego, which launched last week. It uses a basic principle of cognitive science called "spaced repetition" to improve learning. To remember something long term, a student must return to it several times, increasing the interval between each revision. The concept isn't new, but Cerego aims to harness the idea to let people learn anytime, anywhere.

"The amount of information we need to retain is growing rapidly," says Cerego co-founder Andrew Smith Lewis. "Current solutions do a fine job of bringing information to the screen, but we're not seeing much on how we learn." Smith Lewis says Cerego's grand ambition is to "handle learning and relearning for the duration of the user's lifetime".

From the moment you log on to Cerego on a tablet or PC, the software tracks every move you make, learning about you: how long you take to answer questions, how much faster you answer when you've seen a question before, which questions you skip and which questions you get wrong. That information is analysed to work out when you next need to see each piece of information. If you quickly and correctly give the capital of Maryland, for example, the system might wait two or three days before quizzing you on that fact again, and then double the interval after another correct answer. If you are wrong, the item may come up every few minutes until you improve.

"It's all very plausible and reasonable. They know their literature," says Ryan Baker, an educational technology researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. "I haven't seen any commercial products that put together all these different things."

Cerego doesn't yet have any published results to back up the claims made for the product. But Smith Lewis says they are working on this, and points to preliminary tests on language acquisition, run over five weeks at the University of Hawaii and reviewed by Cerego's scientific adviser, Jan Plass at New York University. In those tests, users improved their retention of factual material by a factor of three compared to a visually identical system that didn't run the spacing algorithm.

Another company, Carnegie Learning, has a different approach. Rather than concentrating on the time intervals between learning, Carnegie wants to improve how students grasp mathematics by helping them break down complex processes into chains of individual principles. Such "procedural learning" is something the brain does anyway.

Carnegie's method analyses each step a student takes while solving a maths problem. If they make a mistake, it recommends more study in the specific mathematical operation they are weak in. The idea is to reinforce a particular step in the process, as well as the principles behind it.

"There is this tremendous potential to optimise human learning," says Ken Koedinger, a co-founder of Carnegie Learning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Computational aids that target how we absorb information - like spaced repetition or procedural learning - should improve our capacity for learning. At the moment, Cerego works only for lists of facts, like state capitals, but its makers plan to expand it to become a platform for learning anything, from recipes to the complex skills required for jobs like flying a plane.

Smith Lewis says the company plans to use the data it gathers on its students to offer a certification service, allowing users to show off what they know to employers, for example.

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Changi Airport's aircraft handling capacity to be increased 40%

SINGAPORE - The authorities are gearing up to increase Changi Airport's aircraft handling capacity as there is scope for Changi Airport to handle about 40 per cent more aircraft movements than the 302,000 aircraft movements handled last year.

The airport's air traffic potential of about 430,000 annual aircraft movements is based on findings from a terminal airspace consultancy study commissioned by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and completed by UK NATS, the air navigation service provider of the UK.

In order to grow Changi Airport's capacity, the CAAS will be looking at increasing air traffic management and runway availability, alongside improving collaboration with the airport's stakeholders.

Among other things, the CAAS is considering reducing the duration of scheduled runway closures through leveraging on IT systems to optimise runway inspection processes.

The CAAS will also attempt to reduce separation between aircraft, in order to free up the airport's runways for the next aircraft as soon as possible.

- TODAY

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Obama moves on taxes in latest "cliff" counter-proposal

President Obama gave up Monday on his demand for higher taxes on households earning $250,000 and upped it to $400,000 while embracing smaller cost-of-living Social Security raises in a counter-proposal to House Speaker John Boehner meant to narrow differences and forge a pre-Christmas "fiscal cliff" deal.

Mr. Obama and Boehner met for nearly an hour in the Oval Office on Monday and sources familiar with the talks released specific details of the White House proposal.

Boehner aides said it brought the two sides closer but said a deal was not at hand.

"Any movement away from the unrealistic offers the President has made previously is a step in the right direction, but a proposal that includes $1.3 trillion in revenue for only $930 billion in spending cuts cannot be considered balanced," said Brendan Buck, a Boehner spokesman.

Other senior Republican aides told reporters on Capitol Hill they are not rejecting the latest White House offer, but they also said that there is not parity or balance in the White House plan and substantive issues remain unresolved. One senior aide said the issues that they are talking about are not technically difficult to resolve, but they were wary the differences might be fundamental issues that are difficult to resolve.

But the depth, specificity and fine-grain nature of discussions over policy, tax revenue and spending cuts belied the tough rhetoric from the two sides in the negotiation. Signs point to a deal before the New Year's fiscal cliff deadline -- and possibly an announcement as early as Wednesday.

Play Video

Boehner's "fiscal cliff" offer brings optimism to Capitol Hill

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Boehner's "fiscal cliff" concessions come with a price

Talks picked up genuine momentum on Friday when Boehner agreed to higher income tax rates on households earning $1 million and above. Previously, Boehner opposed all income tax increases. He also gave in on raising the debt ceiling, a vote some Republicans wanted to use as leverage against Obama in 2013. Both gestures, top White House aides said, broke the logjam.

Mr. Obama responded with big concessions of his own on Monday. He offered a $400,000 income threshold for a Clinton-era top tax bracket of 39.6 percent. Boehner had proposed that tax rate for millionaires and a total 10-year tax revenue figure of $1 trillion. Obama wants $1.2 trillion in new revenue. Both sides look for hundreds of billions in new revenue in 2013 through a tax reform process that eliminates some tax deduction and closes loopholes.

The president also wants a two-year ceasefire on raising the debt ceiling. Boehner offered one year.

In addition to disagreement on income levels for tax rates or some other way to get more revenue, the two sides have not set in stone an actual tax reform process. It sounds like they are talking about creating a new sequester-like mechanism in 2014 as incentive for both tax reform and entitlement reforms.

Speaking of entitlements, Boehner also asked the White House to increase the eligibility age for Medicare but Mr. Obama again refused. This difference could loom large as Republicans want structural cost-saving changes in Medicare in exchange for raising income tax rates.

Mr. Obama has given ground on cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security and other federal benefits, but is trying to shield Medicare. Democrats have warned Obama they might bolt if he folds on raising Medicare's eligibility age. They have been less emphatic about cost-of-living adjustments.

Other components of the president's counter-proposal include:

• $1.2 trillion in new income tax revenue with a 39.6 percent (up from 35 percent) on income of $400,000 or more.
• $1.2 trillion in spending cuts divided this way: $800 billion in cuts; $290 billion in interest savings due to lower deficits; $130 billion in cost-of-living adjustments - - with specific protections to preserve increases for economically disadvantaged beneficiaries. Because changing cost-of-living adjustments would also affect where people fell in various tax brackets, this move would raise $90 billion
• The $800 billion in cuts would come from $400 billion in savings to health care entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid; $200 billion in better tax revenue collection, increased financial transaction fees and reduced federal employee benefits.
• $200 billion in domestic discretionary -- annual spending on basic government functions - divided equally between defense and non-defense programs.
• At least $50 billion devoted next year to infrastructure spending and more in latter years - figures still subject to negotiation.
• A one-year extension of unemployment insurance benefits.

Both sides have already agreed to create long-term solutions for the annual ritual of adjusting the Alternative Minimum Tax, the reimbursement formulas for Medicare physicians and a grab-bag of pro-business tax breaks.

Obama also did not ask for an extension of the temporary 2 percent payroll tax - a priority for some Democrats.

Funding for Superstorm Sandy will be handled separately from the emerging fiscal cliff package. The Senate is considering the administration's $60.4 billion request and the White House expects swift, bipartisan approval.

CBS News Capitol Hill producer Jill Jackson contributed to this report.

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Conn. Kids Laid to Rest: 'Our Hearts Are With You'

Visibly shaken attendees exiting the funeral today for 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of 20 children killed in the Connecticut school massacre last week, said they were touched by a story that summed up the first-grader best.

His mother, Veronique, would often tell him how much she loved him and he'd respond: "Not as much as I [love] you," said a New York man who attended the funeral but was not a member of the family.

Noah's family had been scheduled to greet the public before the funeral service began at 1 p.m. at the Abraham L. Green & Son Funeral Home in Fairfield, Conn. The burial was to follow at the B'nai Israel Cemetery in Monroe, Conn. Those present said they were in awe at the composure of Noah's mother.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck, who attended the service, said the first person to speak was Noah's mother, who told mourners that her son's ambition when he grew up was to be either a director of a plant that makes tacos -- because that was his favorite food -- or to be a doctor.

Outside the funeral home, a small memorial lay with a sign reading: "Our hearts are with you, Noah." A red rose was also left behind along with two teddy bears with white flowers and a blue toy car with a note saying "Noah, rest in peace."

CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama on Newtown Shooting: 'We Must Change' Watch Video

The funeral home was adorned with white balloons as members of the surrounding communities came also to pay their respects, which included a rabbi from Bridgeport. More than a dozen police officers were at the front of the funeral home, and an ambulance was on standby at a gas station at the corner.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. and Sen.-Elect Chris Murphy and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, all of Connecticut, were in attendance, the Connecticut Post reported.

Noah was an inquisitive boy who liked to figure out how things worked mechanically, The Associated Press reported. His twin sister, Arielle, was one of the students who survived when her teacher hid her class in the bathroom during the attack.

CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.

The twins celebrated their sixth birthday last month. Noah's uncle Alexis Haller told the AP that he was "smart as a whip," gentle but with a rambunctious streak. He called his twin sister his best friend.

"They were always playing together, they loved to do things together," Haller said.

The funeral for Jack Pinto, 6, was also held today, at the Honan Funeral Home in Newtown. He was to be buried at Newtown Village Cemetery.

Jack's family said he loved football, skiing, wrestling and reading, and he also loved his school. Friends from his wrestling team attended his funeral today in their uniforms. One mourner said the message during the service was: "You're secure now. The worst is over."

Family members say they are not dwelling on his death, but instead on the gift of his life that they will cherish.

The family released a statement, saying, Jack was an "inspiration to all those who knew him."

"He had a wide smile that would simply light up the room and while we are all uncertain as to how we will ever cope without him, we choose to remember and celebrate his life," the statement said. "Not dwelling on the loss but instead on the gift that we were given and will forever cherish in our hearts forever."

Jack and Noah were two of 20 children killed Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., when 20-year-old Adam Lanza sprayed two first-grade classrooms with bullets that also killed six adults.

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'The idea we live in a simulation isn't science fiction'

If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane thinks he has the answer

The idea that we live in a simulation is just science fiction, isn't it?
There is a famous argument that we probably do live in a simulation. The idea is that in future, humans will be able to simulate entire universes quite easily. And given the vastness of time ahead, the number of these simulations is likely to be huge. So if you ask the question: 'do we live in the one true reality or in one of the many simulations?', the answer, statistically speaking, is that we're more likely to be living in a simulation.

How did you end up working on this issue?
My day job is to do high performance computing simulations of the forces of nature, particularly the strong nuclear force. My colleagues and I use a grid-like lattice to represent a small chunk of space and time. We put all the forces into that little cube and calculate what happens. In effect, we're simulating a very tiny corner of the universe.

How accurate are your simulations?
We're able to calculate some of the properties of real things like the simplest nuclei. But the process also generates artefacts that don't appear in the real world and that we have to remove. So we started to think about what sort of artefacts might appear if we lived in a simulation.

What did you discover?
In our universe the laws of physics are the same in every direction. But in a grid, this changes since you no longer have a spacetime continuum, and the laws of physics would depend on direction. Simulators would be able to hide this effect but they wouldn't be able to get rid of it completely.

How might we gather evidence that we're in a simulation?
Using very high energy particles. The highest energy particles that we know of are cosmic rays and there is a well-known natural cut off in their energy at about 10²⁰ electron volts. We calculated that if the simulators used a grid size of about 10^-27 metres, then the cut off energy would vary in different directions.

Do cosmic rays vary in this way?
We don't know. The highest energy cosmic rays are very rare. A square kilometre on Earth is hit by one only about once per century so we're not going to be able map out their distribution any time soon. And even if we do, it'll be hard to show that this is conclusive proof that we're in a simulation.

But can we improve our own simulations?
The size of the universe we simulate is a just fermi, that's a box with sides 10^-15 metres long. But we can use Moore's Law to imagine what we might be able to simulate in future. If the current trends in computing continue, we should be simulating a universe the size of a human within a century and within five centuries, we could manage a box 10²⁶ metres big. That's the size of the observable universe.

How have people reacted to your work?
I gave a lecture on this topic the other week and the turnout was amazing. Half of the people looked at me as if I was disturbed and the other half were very enthusiastic.

Profile

Silas Beane is a physicist at the University of Bonn, Germany. His paper "Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation" has been submitted to the journal Physical Review D

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