It’s a plot device beloved by science fiction: our entire universe might be a simulation running on some advanced civilization’s supercomputer. But new research from UBC Okanagan has mathematically proven this isn’t just unlikely—it’s impossible.
Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor with UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international colleagues, Drs. Lawrence M. Krauss, Arshid Shabir and Francesco Marino have shown that the fundamental nature of reality operates in a way that no computer could ever simulate.
Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we’re not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm.
“It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated. If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation. This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation,” says Dr. Faizal. “This idea was once thought to lie beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. However, our recent research has demonstrated that it can, in fact, be scientifically addressed.”
Right, if you havea VM it takes a hypervisor machine, the hypervisor is more powerful than the VM. You obviously can’t emulate your own reality inside your reality; That makes no sense. If we were in a SIM the outer machine would be a system not operating by our rules, and would be larger. Just like a larger computer is needed to host a VM
The jist of this paper is that it’s not possible to computer a simulation of a universe. Like, there is no sequences of arithmetic or logical operations that could do it, and they’re providing proofs to that effect.
But they are providing proof based on the limitations of the confines of our own reality. A system that simulated our universe would not obey our reality rules…those only are a creation in the sim. We have discovered quantum computing but quantum mechanics might just be a construct for us, and computation outside is more advanced.
Their logic has flawed assumption that the master computer running us with all our physical laws, is a complete copy of the same laws. If we were in a sim there is no reason the hypervisor has same rules/reality as us. It could be a larger environment where speed of light does not have to equal 1, or maybe light don’t snt exist, and that’s one of the made up concepts in the sim