Building Universes from Code: The Fragile Universe Inside Your Machine

Tim Ellis
Dec 1
1 min read

Updated: 4 hours ago

Series: The Physics of Backup & Recovery — Part 1

An illustrated image showing a cartoon-style man floating in mid-air against a dark blue and purple cosmic background. He looks surprised and is gripping a loose computer cable with both hands. In front of him, an open laptop is exploding outward with bright orange and yellow fragments that resemble pieces of data or broken components. Swirling blue and white cloud-like shapes surround the laptop, giving the sense of a chaotic digital storm. The man’s body is tilted backward as if pulled by the force of the explosion. The overall style is colourful and dramatic, with high contrast between the dark background and the bright glowing elements.

In the vastness of the cosmos, stars burn for billions of years…yet a single collapse can reshape everything.

Our computers are not so different.

Inside each machine sits a tiny universe, projects, ideas, worlds-in-progress, all held together by spinning disks, silent circuits, and the faint hum of electricity. It feels stable, permanent, certain

But the truth is far more delicate.

A failed drive, a corrupted file system, a momentary flicker of power…and the universe you rely on can fall out of alignment in an instant. Not because your work wasn’t meaningful, but because physics doesn’t negotiate with us.

This is why backups matter.

They are our way of giving digital universes a second chance, a parallel cosmos held safely apart from the fragility of hardware.

In the next post, we’ll explore what really happens when a system collapses… and why recovery depends entirely on the structures we put in place long before the failure occurs.