{"id":244410,"date":"2026-09-23T01:26:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T06:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/what-billiard-balls-reveal-about-computers-and-the-limits-of-prediction"},"modified":"2026-09-23T01:26:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T06:26:45","slug":"what-billiard-balls-reveal-about-computers-and-the-limits-of-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/what-billiard-balls-reveal-about-computers-and-the-limits-of-prediction","title":{"rendered":"What billiard balls reveal about computers and the limits of prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/what-billiard-balls-reveal-about-computers-and-the-limits-of-prediction.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When is a billiard ball not a billiard ball? When mathematicians get involved and view a popular game as a model computer.<\/p>\n<p>When you send a ball across a table and it hits the sides, it follows simple physical rules. However, mathematicians see a particle (the ball) whose motion can represent information, while each bounce can help guide it through a calculation.<\/p>\n<p>For years, mathematicians have wondered whether billiards are capable of universal computation\u2014in other words, whether a simple two-dimensional billiard system can run any computer program imaginable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When is a billiard ball not a billiard ball? When mathematicians get involved and view a popular game as a model computer. When you send a ball across a table and it hits the sides, it follows simple physical rules. However, mathematicians see a particle (the ball) whose motion can represent information, while each bounce [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,2229,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-mathematics","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}