Someone should make a google that keeps track of every single atom in th universe, of their location, their history and a prediction of their future, which is constantly being updated and compared for error. I think probably the information about how prediction based on history -- and reality -- differed, would end up being the most valuable, because it would pinpoint the "magical" stuff, or the stuff you still didn't know about.
The way to start on a project like this would be to catalog a really tiny system of really large and measurable atoms, or I guess start with a box full of ping pong balls in space, with the sides of the box made out of screens made up of lasers and cameras, so that you could identify each ball by it's unique measurement and then start accumulating a history and making predictions and correcting against the predictions.
And once you got that system pretty good you could move on to a glob of really large molecules vaporized and suspended in a superfluid state by magnets or something like that.
And the eventually you would have a real "current"-cy or information about where everything currently is, was, and might be.
Eventually you would have to think about storing the information inside the system itself, in a distributed way. I don't know how that would work.-- JesusHChrist, Aug 12 2012 Laplace's demon http://en.wikipedia...iki/Laplace's_demonIt is Laplace. I think Maxwell's demon is very small and operates an atomic scale trapdoor. [bungston, Aug 12 2012] http://xkcd.com/824/ See the third line of this comic - Mrs Heisenberg: "I can't find my car keys" - Mr Heisenberg: "You probably know too much about their momentum" [hippo, Aug 14 2012] I have got started on this just now with an atom I have here.
What you propose has a name, and an associated daemon. LaPlace? Maxwell? I will check.-- bungston, Aug 12 2012 Thanks for that. Before i read the whole thing let me just say that I keep thinking that even if you couldn't measure the location, histories and futures of every atom, the difference between (what you did know and what that allowed you to predict)-- and (what actually happened) would tell you more and more about what you hadn't known in the past, and that the frontier there would probably be what goes on inside people's heads rather than what happens in other places that are hard to get at to measure like the inside of the earth. And so if you started a project to be able to predict the futures of relatively independent systems that you could use what you learned to start larger and larger projects.-- JesusHChrist, Aug 12 2012 How exactly are you going to differentiate them individually in order to keep track of them?-- RayfordSteele, Aug 13 2012 I guess you would start with the ping pong balls, so by a combination of size and other individually indentifiable qualities like temperature, speed, spin, and by the probability that the measured particle is the same as a previously measured particle based on similarity to previous measurement and relation ship to nearby particles.-- JesusHChrist, Aug 13 2012 so... keeping track of every single ping pong ball ? laudable, I suppose.
//keeping track// quantum thingummy.-- FlyingToaster, Aug 13 2012 There's only 3.2 x 10^89 of them. We're gonna need a bigger ball of string.-- UnaBubba, Aug 13 2012 Google Atomview
Or vaguely redolent of Emo Phillips scheme of tearing a piece of paper in half repeatedly, to eventually split the atom.-- not_morrison_rm, Aug 13 2012 I have a Mr. Heisenberg here, and he'd like to have a word with you.-- MechE, Aug 13 2012 //I have a Mr. Heisenberg here// Where?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 13 2012 - and what's his momentum?-- hippo, Aug 13 2012 Only one of those questions can be answered at a time ...-- 8th of 7, Aug 13 2012 Then only ask one at a time.-- UnaBubba, Aug 15 2012 random, halfbakery