Experts are testing to see if we are living in a computer simulation. Check out the latest reports about this below.
Testing to see if we’re living in a computer simulation
Physicists have been struggling to explain why the universe began with conditions that were just right for the evolution of life. They are trying to understand why the physical laws and constants have very specific values that allow stars, planets, and, ultimately life to develop.
The universe’s expansive force, dark energy, for instance, is weaker than what the theory suggests, which has allowed matter to clump together instead of being ripped apart.
One common explanation is that we live in an infinite multiverse of universes, so it’s not surprising that at least one universe turned out like ours.
Another explanation is that our universe is a computer simulation, and someone, maybe an advanced alien species, fine-tuned the conditions.
The theory of information physics suggests that space-time and matter are not fundamental phenomena, and that the physical reality is actually made up of bits of information. In this theory, our experience of space-time emerges from this information, much like how temperature emerges from the collective movement of atoms.
This leads to the possibility that our entire universe might actually be a computer simulation.
This idea is not new – physicist John Archibald Wheeler proposed in 1989 that the universe is fundamentally mathematical and can be seen as emerging from information.
He famously coined the phrase “it from bit.”
Philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University formulated the simulation hypothesis in 2003. According to this hypothesis, it is highly probable that we are living in a simulation.
This is because once a civilization becomes advanced enough, their technology becomes so sophisticated that simulations are indistinguishable from reality, and participants would not be aware that they were in a simulation.
Physicist Seth Lloyd from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggested that the entire universe could be a giant quantum computer, taking the simulation hypothesis to the next level. In 2016, business magnate Elon Musk concurred with this hypothesis and concluded that we are most likely in a simulation.
There is some evidence suggesting that our physical reality could be a simulated virtual reality rather than an objective world that exists independently of the observer.
Any virtual reality world is based on information processing; which means that everything is ultimately digitized or pixelated down to a minimum size that cannot be subdivided further: bits.
This appears to mimic our reality according to the theory of quantum mechanics that governs the world of atoms and particles.
This theory states that there is a smallest, discrete unit of energy, length, and time. Similarly, elementary particles, which make up all the visible matter in the universe, are the smallest units of matter. In simple words, our world is pixelated.
The laws of physics that govern everything in the universe are similar to the computer code lines that a simulation would follow in the execution of the program.
Moreover, mathematical equations, numbers, and geometric patterns are present everywhere. Therefore, it appears that the world is entirely mathematical.
