Every day we take for granted what we think is "real." But in reality, this "reality" is a reflection of some objective reality, its distortion passed through our filters. What is this reality? The atoms and molecules that make up our bodies do exist; photons interacting with us have energy and momentum; the neutrons passing through us every second are quantum particles. But the Universe, from tiny subatomic particles to the largest collections of galaxies, may not exist as a physical whole, but be a simulation in another reality, the "true" one.
This topic, in my opinion, deserves to become a religion or techno myth of the 21st century. Those who plunge into it headlong are divided into two groups: the first consider it interesting, but are skeptical; the latter consider it extremely interesting and collect bit by bit everything they can find on this matter.
I wouldn't be surprised if science fiction picks up this wave - or even revives it (we already know this from The Matrix and Beginning). But what is especially interesting is that this idea has a good physical basis. This is not a madman's ravings. This is solid science.
One of nature's biggest mysteries is why the laws of nature have exactly the meanings they do. Why is there only a fixed set of elementary particles, interactions and fundamental constants describing the Universe? We do not have any mathematical or physical principles that determine what our universe should be made of, or allow us to figure out everything that fundamentally exists. We are inside the Universe by ourselves and can only observe a limited part of it with a limited depth of sensitivity. This is partly due to the inferiority of our equipment, and partly due to fundamental limitations.
ILYA KHEL
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We can't see anything over 46 billion light-years away because the amount of time since the Big Bang, combined with the speed of light, prevents us from seeing further. We cannot explore distances less than 10 to 19 meters at present due to the limitations of our technology, but the universe itself has a fundamental quantum limit of 10 to 35 degrees of a meter. Even with unlimited technology, we couldn't measure distances less than that. And attempts to measure different parameters simultaneously reveal fundamental uncertainties that we can never overcome: the quantum limits of the knowable.
It is possible that there are real, physical explanations for why these and other parameters of the Universe are just like that. We just haven't found them yet. But it's also likely that their meanings were encoded within the universe itself. In a literal, not figurative sense: because our universal reality is a simulation. Our computing power has continued to grow at an alarming rate for the past 70 years or so. We've progressed from building-sized calculators to printer-sized supercomputers that can do trillions of particle simulations in minutes.
If the computing power increases enough, we could, in principle, simulate every particle in the entire universe throughout its history. If the computer we created were quantum and could support every single particle in an indefinite quantum state, then our simulation would have the quantum uncertainty inherent in our universe. And if this simulation would give life to planets with life, intelligent beings on it, would they be able to understand that they are living in a simulation? Of course, finding scientists who say no is pretty easy. For example, NASA's Rich Terrill says this:
“Even things that we consider extended - time, energy, space, volume - all have limitations in size. And then our Universe is both calculated and finite. These properties allow the universe to be simulated."
But from a physical point of view, this may not be true. Quantum uncertainty may be real, but this does not mean that space and time are quantized or that the photon's energy can be arbitrarily small. The observable universe may be finite, but if you turn on the unobservable universe, it may be infinite. We also use all sorts of tricks to reduce the computational load of our models, but evidence that the universe uses tricks of this kind will show up in experiments as "blurry" results at small enough distances that we can't see at all.
While it is true that the results of information theory often appear in the field of cutting-edge research in theoretical physics, this may also be because both disciplines obey consistent mathematical relationships. Some of the arguments - that in the future it will be possible to easily imitate the mind, which means there will be simulations of organic consciousness, which means we ourselves can be a simulation of consciousness - are so flimsy and do not stand up to criticism that it is sad to observe them as these very arguments. For example, why would someone who can simulate the entire universe want to suddenly simulate the consciousness of a human being? This topic was seriously discussed in April.
Upon closer inspection, it also turns out that this theory teases the imagination too beautifully. But it still becomes a simple and elegant, but, alas, a fake explanation of complex modern issues, which raises the question, why then science is needed at all … if there is a religion.
What's also remarkable is that even if you find evidence - say, in cosmic rays - that spacetime is discrete, it would be an incredible breakthrough in our knowledge of the universe, but it would not prove the simulation hypothesis. In fact, there is no way to prove it; any "glitches" we find or don’t find could be properties of the universe itself … or parameters that have been placed or tweaked by the creators of the simulation.
And we cannot make a scientific judgment or estimate the likelihood of this idea, however attractive it may be. Part of the appeal of physics lies in how counter-intuitive it is, but also how powerful a predictive tool it is. Even if we do live in a simulation, this will not change our process of understanding and searching for the foundations of the laws of nature, how they came to this and why the fundamental constants have exactly the meanings they do. “Because we live in a simulation” will not be the answer to these questions.