A scientist may have just proven that we all live inside a computer simulation

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“as he thrusts Keanu Reeves’s Neo with the option to discover just how ‘deep the rabbit hole goes’”.

Now, just as Neo discovered that the "life" he had been living was little more than an artificial set-up, scientists and philosophers are arguing that we might be stuck inside a simulated existence.

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illusions.

It is one of the well-known supporters of the theory, which - as Dr Vopson points out in his paper - has become a subject of growing interest among both scientists and those in the entertainment industry.

The university lecturer also noted that more recent advances in a branch of science called information physics "appear to support this possibility".

It's believed by some in the field of information physics that the physical world is comprised of units of information.

However, Dr Vopson has taken this further and is endeavouring to prove that information indeed possesses a physical mass and is a fundamental component of the universe.

He even suggests that information could be the enigmatic dark matter that constitutes nearly a third of the universe.

In previous research, the physicist suggested that all elementary particles (the smallest known building blocks of the universe), retain information about themselves, somewhat akin to how DNA functions in humans.

This principle, often expressed by the phrase "the second law of thermodynamics", states that the randomness or amount of disorganisation within an isolated information system does not increase and can only decrease over time.

In other words, the system becomes increasingly orderly and less chaotic, suggesting that there is some kind of mechanism at play rather than just pure chance.

commissioned by the University of Portsmouth.

What I'd like to do now is see if we can put the law to the test and take the simulation hypothesis from purely philosophical ideas into more widely accepted scientific theory.

Dr Vopson applied the law in various fields, including genetics, cosmology, and symmetry.

Here, he found that the abundance of symmetry in the universe (consider snowflakes and facial features) could be explained by the second law of information dynamics.

"Symmetry has a key role in the laws of nature, but so far there has been little explanation as to why that could be," he said.

My research indicates that total symmetry is reflective of the subtlest state of disorder, which may account for nature's tendency towards it.

In simple terms, nature likes things to be in as orderly a state as possible.

He continued: "This approach, where unnecessary information is discarded, is similar to a computer deleting or compressing obsolete files to free up storage space and improve power efficiency."

As a consequence, this "supports the notion that we’re currently residing in a simulated reality."

to test it.

At the time, he made the claim that he had created an experiment to find out whether we are all simply characters in a highly advanced virtual reality world.

released back in December.

If information is a key component of everything in the universe, one might reasonably assume that a vast computer somewhere must be at the helm.

“From a hypothetical perspective, if the entire universe is seen as a simulated environment, there must be a vast amount of hidden data scattered throughout it. In an attempt to verify this concept, I have formulated a scientific test that attempts to extract this information to confirm its existence.”

His proposed experiment is based on his conclusion that information is a tangible thing and that elementary particles possess a genetic blueprint of information that describes themselves.

He proposed that it is possible to detect and measure the information contained within an elementary particle by analysing the outcome of particle-antiparticle collisions.

"We can measure the amount of information contained in a particle by deleting it, then looking at what's left," he said in his December statement.

“I am fairly confident that we can carry out this experiment successfully using our current resources, and I hope the crowdfunding site will assist us in making it happen.”

And while the crowdfunding campaign finished well short of its proposed £185,000 goal, Dr Vopson is still hoping to undertake the ambitious experiment.

Following his most recent paper, he suggested the experiment had the potential to confirm the “fifth state of matter in the universe” and "change our understanding of physics."

This article was first published on 13th October 2023

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