Can I simulate physics in two locations simultaneously?

When running physics ideally you want to be as close to the origin as possible due to floating point precision issues. For a large play space I can translate the world to keep my player near the origin. However, if I have a second player or object (e.g. remote probe or split-screen player) that needs accurate physics but is located far away from the player is there a way to do this?

Is there a way to run a second instance of the physics engine that I can center around the second object? Alternatively, can I somehow separate my game objects into groups such that objects in group A don’t interact with objects in group B and vice versa and then have the two groups essentially occupy the same space?

You can use layers to make 2 layers not collide with each other. You set collisions between layers in the Physics/Physics2D tabs in project settings.