Mind-blowing geeky stuff

I was thinking about Conway's Game of Life (look it up! now!) once again, thinking about patterns that generate infinite sequences of pattern, when I wondered: "is there a Conway pattern that will generate everything possible in the Conway universe? I thought of the Turing-completeness of the game of life, and the answer struck me.

( The proof: yes there is! )

This is mind-blowing! If the universe follows a finite and deterministic set of laws like the Game of Life does, and is Turing complete, then it is possible, but not neccessary that every possible finite structure will be created, every possible thought will occur to somebody, every possible book will be written, every possible LJ post posted, that Alex will exist in infinitely many variations infinitely many times. It all depends on the initial configuration. Does God exist? Was this his plan? Is this the true translation of "let there be light"? Or is he nonexistent? Or incompetent?

Under current models of the universe, it is unlikely that this is the case. For the universe to be Turing complete, it would seem to require infinite amounts of energy, matter and time, which doesn't appear to be true. Mind you, perhaps we could somehow create things smaller and smaller; entire worlds the size of the head of a pin, which would create smaller worlds, ad infinitum (N.B. each world would also have to operate at twice the speed of the last). Then it would be possible and we can rejoice in the prospect of infinite variety in all things. Or despair. 8^)