Physicists have long struggled to explain why the
Universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Why do the
physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow stars,
planets, and ultimately life to develop?
The expansive force of the Universe, dark energy,
for example, is much weaker than theory suggests it should be – allowing matter
to clump together rather than being ripped apart.
A common answer is that we live in an infinite
multiverse of Universes, so we shouldn't be surprised that at least one
Universe has turned out as ours. But another is that our Universe is a computer
simulation, with someone (perhaps an advanced alien species) fine-tuning the
conditions.
The latter option is supported by a branch of
science called information physics, which suggests that space-time and matter
are not fundamental phenomena. Instead, the physical reality is fundamentally
made up of bits of information, from which our experience of space-time
emerges.
By comparison, temperature "emerges" from
the collective movement of atoms. No single atom fundamentally has temperature.
This leads to the extraordinary possibility that our
entire Universe might in fact be a computer simulation.
The idea is not that new. In 1989, the legendary
physicist, John Archibald Wheeler, suggested that the Universe is fundamentally
mathematical and it can be seen as emerging from information. He coined the
famous aphorism "it from bit".
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford
University in the UK formulated his simulation hypothesis. This argues that it
is actually highly probable that we live in a simulation.
That's because an advanced civilization should reach
a point where their technology is so sophisticated that simulations would be
indistinguishable from reality, and the participants would not be aware that
they were in a simulation.
Physicist Seth Lloyd from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in the US took the simulation hypothesis to the next
level by suggesting that the entire Universe could be a giant quantum computer.
Empirical evidence
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 will be based on
information processing. That means 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, which rules the world of atoms and particles. It
states 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. To put it
simply, our world is pixelated.
The laws of physics that govern everything in the
Universe also resemble computer code lines that a simulation would follow in
the execution of the program. Moreover, mathematical equations, numbers, and
geometric patterns are present everywhere – the world appears to be entirely
mathematical.
Another curiosity in physics supporting the
simulation hypothesis is the maximum speed limit in our Universe, which is the
speed of light. In a virtual reality, this limit would correspond to the speed
limit of the processor, or the processing power limit.
We know that an overloaded processor slows down
computer processing in a simulation. Similarly, Albert Einstein's theory of
general relativity shows that time slows in the vicinity of a black hole.
Perhaps the most supportive evidence of the
simulation hypothesis comes from quantum mechanics. This suggest nature isn't
"real": particles in determined states, such as specific locations,
don't seem to exist unless you actually observe or measure them. Instead, they
are in a mix of different states simultaneously. Similarly, virtual reality
needs an observer or programmer for things to happen.
Quantum " entanglement" also allows two
particles to be spookily connected so that if you manipulate one, you automatically
and immediately also manipulate the other, no matter how far apart they are –
with the effect being seemingly faster than the speed of light, which should be
impossible.
This could, however, also be explained by the fact
that within a virtual reality code, all "locations" (points) should
be roughly equally far from a central processor. So while we may think two
particles are millions of light years apart, they wouldn't be if they were
created in a simulation.
Possible experiments
Assuming that the Universe is indeed a simulation,
then what sort of experiments could we deploy from within the simulation to
prove this?
It is reasonable to assume that a simulated Universe
would contain a lot of information bits everywhere around us. These information
bits represent the code itself. Hence, detecting these information bits will
prove the simulation hypothesis.
The recently proposed mass-energy-information
(M/E/I) equivalence principle – suggesting mass can be expressed as energy or
information, or vice versa – states that information bits must have a small
mass. This gives us something to search for.
I have postulated that information is in fact a
fifth form of matter in the Universe. I've even calculated the expected
information content per elementary particle. These studies led to the
publication, in 2022, of an experimental protocol to test these predictions.
The experiment involves erasing the information
contained inside elementary particles by letting them and their antiparticles
(all particles have "anti" versions of themselves which are identical
but have opposite charge) annihilate in a flash of energy – emitting
"photons", or light particles.
I have predicted the exact range of expected
frequencies of the resulting photons based on information physics. The
experiment is highly achievable with our existing tools, and we have launched a
crowdfunding site to achieve it.
There are other approaches too. The late physicist
John Barrow has argued that a simulation would build up minor computational
errors which the programmer would need to fix in order to keep it going.
He suggested we might experience such fixing as
contradictory experimental results appearing suddenly, such as the constants of
nature changing. So monitoring the values of these constants is another option.
The nature of our reality is one of the greatest
mysteries out there. The more we take the simulation hypothesis seriously, the
greater the chances we may one day prove or disprove it.
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