Our Universe is a Simulation
The more we study the world around us, the more we learn about the inner workings of the universe we live in. As computing power grows, more and more physicists have given thought that our world and the universe we live in, is nothing more than a highly sophisticated simulation, and that us little self-aware humans are just players in the computer-generated world we live in.
Much of the physics ideas presented below are taught starting in high school, and again in college where higher levels of mathematics are used to solve the details. None of this is secret, but just not discussed outside the halls of academia.
Following are some of the ideas that show our world to be a computer simulation.
1. Our universe is pixellated.
In the early 20th century a very bright man by the name of Max Planck reasoned out that space (and therefore everything) is discontinuous. If you look closely at an older TV screen or computer monitor, the type with a glass tube, you will see the image becomes a series of little dots with nothing in between. Also, if you wanted to store a picture or a map in computer memory, it would be stored as discrete bytes, each byte describing a tiny bit of information. This applies to time as well.
That's how our universe works. It is not linear, but broken up in very tiny chunks.
2. Nothing exists until it is directly studied.
You've probably heard the old adage, "if a tree falls in the forest, and there is nobody around to hear it fall, does it make a noise?". In reality, if nobody is in the forest, the forest doesn't exist. Until something is being looked at, or otherwise studied on the sub-atomic level, it is in what is known as a state of super-position. This means that sub-atomic particles are in a kind of standby until needed. When they are looked at or otherwise needed, they fall back into place and reality re-asserts itself. This isn't just some cooky idea, but proven time and time again. Modern electronics, the computer chips that run the device you are reading this on, are based on this concept. The smartphone you use daily wouldn't work if this wasn't true.
Sometimes these sub-atomic particles don't fall back where they were before. In fact, there are several discrete places where the particles can "re-appear". Sometimes they come back in unexpected places just outside of where they would normally show up. This makes small microelectronics, like memory circuits in computers, unreliable when computer components get smaller. This is known as tunneling, and a device called a tunnel diode actually makes use of this property. Tunnel diodes have been around for decades.
3. The instructions for building the universe are encoded in matter itself.
Leonard Susskind, a well-known (and brilliant) physicist, has been studying string theory, the physical properties of matter on a very small scale, and gave a TV interview where he stated that the tiny particles (strings) that define matter and our universe actually are the source code (software programs) that define our universe itself. In essence, we can read the computer code used to create our universe by studying the building blocks that make up our world.
4. The universe is a hologram.
A hologram is a method of creating a 3-D image using the technique of scanning two surfaces. A hologram allows you to view a 3-D picture on a flat surface. You probably have a hologram on your drivers license and credit card.
A hologram is a great way to store what looks like the world around us in computer memory using very little storage space. By using holograms, a lot of information can be saved with very little memory, which is a very useful when running simulations.
Professor Mathew Headrick (and many others) have been studying this idea for some time. The idea of a holographic universe is the "holy grail in theoretical physics, a grand unified theory that can explain all the laws and principles governing reality". Some of the ideas of gravity, dark matter, and other concepts are currently beyond scientists understanding. There are many hidden concepts to the understanding of our universe that could be explained if our universe is nothing more than a giant computing system whose purpose is unknown to us.
5. New ideas and concepts are spread around the world at the same time.
There is a concept taught in anthropology and philosophy courses known as the "super ID", the idea that new ideas and concepts occur throughout the world at approximately the same time. A system of writing (using symbols almost identical to each other) formed tens of thousands of years ago in different parts of the world almost simultaneously where there was no possibility of contact between those groups that developed it. The idea of calculus (a branch of higher mathematics) came to two people (Leibnetz and Newton) on two different continents within a few days of each other. The telephone was developed independently by Bell, Meucci and Gray separately on different continents at about the same time. There are many examples of ideas and concepts coming into being around the world at the same time where there is no chance of contact.
Whether this is a chance occurrence or the result of something guiding our development is unknown.
In summary:
Running simulations on computers is something that has been done since computers were invented. Weather simulations, nuclear explosions, the stock markets can all be modeled on computers. There are specialized computer languages (Simula-2) that are designed to create and run simulations of the world around us to explain how the world works.
Many started their careers by writing a Ph.D thesis on computer simulations and modeling the world around us. Recently a very complete simulation was run on a supercomputer that showed the first few seconds of the big bang, the start of our own universe. Every year brings us more powerful supercomputers, more complex programs and a new crop of very bright and gifted computer scientists that extend the bounds of what computing devices are capable of. It is only a matter of time until we are able to create a real-world simulation that has self-aware programs that will study the universe we create for them.
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