Randomness

Posted on Oct 7th 2009 | 0comments

I have always been amazed by the randomness existing around us. In fact, more amazing is the perfection existing in the randomness around us. Perfection in randomness sounds like an oxymoron, and yet it holds so true for our mother nature.

We have been trying to understand this randomness with our highly developed brain, which itself is a prime example of randomness (read perfection in randomness) in a biological structure. In fact, so complex is this biological structure that we are still trying to understand it in spite of all the scientific progress we have made through the ages. In this ongoing process of understanding randomness, we have also utilized it for our benefits especially in the field of information security. Read this article to know about entropy in computing.

Following is a very simple example applying the randomness concept for generating passwords using php language:

 
<?php

print mt_rand(10, 50);//Outputs a random integer between 10 and 50 

	function password($var){

$pass = str_shuffle('abcefghqxyzABCDEFGOPQRSTUVWXYZ123457@$');

return substr($pass,5,$var);

}
?>

This idea of utilizing the randomness concept in a programming language led to me a thought that what if god was asked to create the universe like a computer program(s) using a certain programming language in an IDE installed on a machine having infinitely high computational power.(In fact, this thought has its origins here)

Now, god has to create an extremely complex program known as Universe with this programming language. The main function of this program (Universe) would be to generate various celestial bodies like stars, planets, etc along with generating life. Moreover, all these generated products will have to exhibit randomness. Therefore, a major challenge for god is that these generated objects should exhibit randomness in such a way that they also remain stable at least for certain duration of time. Moreover, the program should be coded in accordance with some pre-defined laws like the law of conservation of energy.

I agree that this all seems ridiculous as god is creating the universe on something which has been developed by humans (computers and programming language). So, just for the time being, assume that god is indeed creating the universe with the help of a programming language. (As such, this all is supposed to be fun, right?)

Let’s make this more interesting. Suppose god’s programming language is known as Sci{}. The reason for calling it Sci{} is that the universe is to be created in accordance with some pre-defined scientific laws or a set of laws (hence {} to demonstrate a set according to the set theory)

This is an object oriented programming language and just like our programming languages, this programming language also has a well defined syntax, type system, execution semantics and a core library. The core library would be something like a base class library containing namespaces like System.Particles which would define the elementary particles from which the universe would be constructed.

This is already getting funny and interesting!! Now, I know that Sci{} would be heavily influenced by our own programming languages like C#. But the objective here is to play with the randomness existing around us with the help of a pseudo programming language. Obviously, it was not possible to use C# for god as its library does not contain anything which is needed for the creation of the universe!!

It seems like gods from all our religions worked together to code this Universe. They certainly must have used something like a universal GitHub for revision control!!

Now, in upcoming posts we will have a look at Sci{} ‘s syntax and its library. You all are always welcome to give me suggestions to make the upcoming posts more funny and interesting.

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