Are you made of real-world quarks or virtual-world qubits?
Is it possible we’re living in a virtual simulation? Professor Catherine Heymans, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, does the maths on whether anything is actually real
The story explores the possibility that we may be living in a simulated reality, created by a highly advanced civilization. It begins with the author's personal journey into this question after her young child asked if they might be living inside a computer game. The discussion delves into the concepts of quantum mechanics, dark matter, dark energy, and general relativity, which all suggest that our universe is mathematical in nature.
The author acknowledges that while the standard model of particle physics has been incredibly accurate, it fails to explain certain phenomena, such as the behavior of neutrinos and the nature of gravity. The author then introduces the idea that if our universe is indeed mathematical and based on a theory of everything, it could be a simulation running on advanced quantum computers.
This leads to the argument that the vast majority of "humans" in such a simulation would be virtual, making the probability of an individual existing in the "base reality" extremely low. However, the author concludes that even if our universe is mathematical and could potentially be a simulation, the energy required to create such a simulation would be astronomically high, and therefore it is highly unlikely that we are living in a computer simulation.
The story does not definitively answer the question of whether we are living in a simulation, but rather presents the idea as a thought-provoking possibility based on current scientific understanding.
Written by urgent.news from New Scientist's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
