The simulation theory suggests that the world that people live in today is not the reality. Rather, it is an advanced simulated virtual reality and one theoretical physicist wants to test it.
In his essay for the Conversation, Melvin Vopson,a senior lecturer in physics from the University of Portsmouth, England, laid out the theory of his simulation test based on the idea that a "simulated universe would contain a lot of information bits everywhere." Now, he is crowdfunding to support his study to check if humans indeed are just living in a computer simulation.
History of Simulation Theory
Physicists have struggled to explain why the universe started with conditions suitable for life to evolve which has led to more questions. A common answer points to the infinite multiverse of universes, but another growing belief is that the universe is a computer simulation in that someone is fine-tuning.
According to Vopson, the simulation theory is supported by the branch of science called information physics. This is a branch of science that deals with space-time and matter as not fundamental phenomena but sees physical reality as fundamentally made up of bits of information.
The idea that the entire universe might be a computer simulation started in 1989 when physicist John Archibald Wheeler suggested that the universe is fundamentally mathematical and can be seen as emerging from information.
Then in 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University formulated his simulation hypothesis, which argues that it is highly probable humans live in a simulation because it is highly possible that an advanced civilization has reached a point where technology is so sophisticated that simulations would be indistinguishable from reality.
Empirical Evidence of a Simulated Virtual Reality
Vopson wrote in his essay that there is some evidence that might prove that physical reality is only a simulated virtual reality. He explained that any virtual reality world will be based on information processing, which means everything is digitalized or pixelated to a minimum size that can no longer be subdivided.
His suggestion appears to mimic the physical reality as suggested by the quantum mechanics theory, which states that there is a smallest, discrete unit of energy, length, and time. Simply saying, the world is pixelated.
The laws of physics that are said to govern the universe are compared to computer code lines that a simulated world would follow based on the execution of the program. Additionally, mathematical equations, numbers, and geometric patterns are all present everywhere, making the world entirely mathematical.
Furthermore, physicists are curious about the speed limit in the universe, which is the speed of light. In virtual reality, that limit is equivalent to the speed limit of the processor. An Overloaded processor slows down computer processing in a simulation, just as Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity shows.
M/E/I Equivalence Principle
Per Futurism's report, Vopson's project aims at his recently proposed "mass-energy-information (M/E/I) equivalence principle." His theory suggests that mass can be expressed in the information and he believes that information buts would have a small mass. If he could find the mass of the bits, then he theoretically could detect the bits.
He wrote that the information is considered the fifth form of matter in the universe after solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. To prove his claim, he wrote on his Indiegogo page that he would "build a workbench positron-electron annihilation system" that contains custom-built components that allow gamma and infrared photon detection.
But that would require a lot of money and so far he has only raised $1,000 out of his $219,000 goal.
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