Graphs v hypergraphs in Wolfram Physics with Jonathan Gorard

The Last Theory

Here’s a slightly technical question:

Does Wolfram Physics really need hypergraphs?

Or could it based on graphs instead?

Jonathan Gorard shares some interesting insights into the evolution of Stephen Wolfram’s model for a fundamental theory of physics.

Wolfram started with trivalent graphs, in which each edge joins two nodes, and each node has three edges.

But when he ran into issues implementing simulations using these simple graphs, he solved the problem by graduating to hypergraphs, in which each hyperedge can join any number of nodes, and each node can have any number of hyperedges.

Here’s how hypergraphs, rather than graphs, came to be the basis of Wolfram Physics.

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Jonathan Gorard

• Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
• Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
• Jonathan Gorard on Twitter
• The Centre for Applied Compositionality
• The Wolfram Physics Project

Concepts mentioned by Jonathan

• Trivalent networks (a.k.a. cubic graphs)
• Mathematica

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I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

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