Scientist publishes ‘proof’ that we live in a computer simulation

“The matrix is ​​everywhere. It’s all around us. Even now in this room.“

So says Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus in the sci-fi classic ‘The Matrix’, as he offers Keanu Reeves’ Neo the choice to find out how “deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Now that Neo discovered that the “life” he led was little more than an algorithmic construct, scientists and philosophers argue that we could be stuck in a simulation ourselves.

In a paper published earlier this month, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth offered scientific evidence for a philosophical theory known as the simulation hypothesis.

This, in a nutshell, states that the entire universe and our objective reality are just super-advanced virtual reality illusions.

Elon Musk is one of the well-known fans of the theory, which – as Dr. Vopson notes in his article – “is gaining popularity in scientific circles and also in the entertainment industry”.

The university lecturer also pointed out that recent developments in a branch of science known as information physics “seem to support this possibility.”

Elon Musk is a proponent of the simulation hypothesisGetty Images

Information physics suggests that physical reality consists of pieces of information.

Dr. However, Vopson has gone further and tries to prove that information has physical mass and is a fundamental building block of the universe.

He even claims that information could be the mysterious dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe.

In previous research, the physicist proposed that all elementary particles (the smallest known building blocks in the universe) store information about themselves, just like DNA in humans.

Then, in 2022, he discovered a new law of physics called the second law of infodynamics, which states that entropy – the degree of randomness or disorder – within an isolated information system remains constant or decreases over time.

In other words, the system is becoming less and less chaotic, implying that there is some kind of mechanism underlying it rather than random chance.

“I knew then that this revelation had far-reaching implications for several scientific disciplines,” Dr Vopson said in a statement released by the University of Portsmouth.

“What I wanted to do next is put the law to the test and see if it could further support the simulation hypothesis by moving it from the philosophical domain into mainstream science.”

Is the universe a simulation? | Melvin Vopsonwww.youtube.com

Dr. Vopson applied the law to a range of different areas, including genetics, cosmology and even symmetry.

Here he discovered that the abundance of symmetry in the universe (think snowflakes and facial structures) could be explained by the second law of infodynamics.

“Principles of symmetry play an important role with respect to the laws of nature, but so far there is little explanation as to why that might be the case,” he said.

“My findings show that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, which may explain nature’s tendency toward this.”

Again, simply put, nature prefers things to be as well ordered as possible.

He continued: “This approach, which removes redundant information, is similar to the process by which a computer removes or compresses waste code to save storage space and optimize energy consumption.”

As a result, “this supports the idea that we are living in a simulation.”

Dr. Vopson gave some examples of naturally occurring symmetries in his articleMelvin M. Vopson/AIP Progress

Dr. Vopson takes this idea seriously and even launched a crowdfunding campaign last year to test it.

At the time, he announced that he had designed an experiment to determine whether we are all just characters in an advanced virtual world.

“There is a growing community that is looking seriously at the possibility that information is more fundamental to everything than we think,” he said in a statement released in December.

“If information is a key component of everything in the universe, it would make sense that a huge computer somewhere would be in control.

“Assuming the universe is indeed a simulation, then it must contain a lot of bits of information hidden all around us. I have devised an experiment that proposes a way to extract this information to prove that it is there.”

Dr. Vopson believes that information is the fundamental building block of the universe and has physical massiStock

His proposed experiment is based on his conclusion that information is physical and that elementary particles have a DNA with information about themselves.

He proposed that the information in an elementary particle could be detected and measured using collisions between particles and antiparticles.

“We can measure the information content of a particle by erasing it. If we remove the information from the particles, we can see what remains,” he said in the December statement.

“This experiment is very feasible with our existing tools, and I hope the crowdfunding site will help us achieve this.”

And although the crowdfunder closed well before reaching its proposed target of £185,000, Dr Vopson still hopes to carry out the ambitious test.

Following his most recent paper, he suggested that the experiment had the power to confirm the “fifth state of matter in the universe” and “change physics as we know it.”

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