Can a universe be stored within that universe?
Common logic might suggest it is impossible to store the entire universe within the universe. Lets for now ignore the logistics of how one could actually move the whole universe to somewhere within that universe surely it would be a circular logic.
The origin of this thought pattern appart from perhaps my general madness, comes from an article which I read at work the other day there. It was talking about the Digital Universe. That being the collective storage of all electronic information globally.
Expansion of the Universe
What we shall do in this line of thought is neutralize the assumption that the universe is growing and infinte. My reasons for this decision is because the physical universe is expanding, and the digital universe is also expanding. In fact, the article in question expects that this year, we will generate 1.8 ZettaBytes of additional data. A quantity so huge that we would need enough iPads to build the great wall of china, but at twice the height of the normal Great Wall of China.
To Scale Modeling
Alright, so we have at least enough storage to store the great wall of china physically to scale. How far can we take it, within that storage facility lets place 3d modeled graphics of everything to scale of 1:1. That is, if you build a box, 1 meter wide, by 1 meter high in your 3-d graphics world, if you were ot output it on a 3-d printer, you would end up with a 1 meter wide, 1 meter high box.
Now, taking the storage capacity of the world, against a 1:1 model of an object, we should be able to establish what the ratio of the digital universe to the physical universe is.
Sentient Life
Fundamentally, all life comes down to motion of electrical signals and reactions from those signals. Now, as a programmer I know that we could emulate this process, so if we were to integrate the raw physics of the universe to our 3d-model of the universe, we would great what would appear to be a working model of the entire universe to the point that life within it surely must achive sentient status.
So we can create an entire duplicate of our universe, fully working in digital form. In theory at least, the logic involved in making this work would cost a fortune and I can imagine we may encounter many ethical questions about doing it in the first place. Would it be ethical to create sentient life which we can destroy entire civilizations with just by hitting the power button?