A question that has vexed physicists for the past century may finally have a solution – but perhaps not the one everyone was hoping for.

A team of physicists led by Mir Faizal at the University of British Columbia has demonstrated that the universe cannot be a computer simulation, according to research published in October 2025[1].

The key findings show that reality requires non-algorithmic understanding that cannot be simulated computationally. The researchers used mathematical theorems from Gödel, Tarski, and Chaitin to prove that a complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone[1:1].

The team proposes that physics needs a “Meta Theory of Everything” (MToE) - a non-algorithmic layer above the algorithmic one to determine truth from outside the mathematical system[1:2]. This would help investigate phenomena like the black hole information paradox without violating mathematical rules.

“Any simulation is inherently algorithmic – it must follow programmed rules,” said Faizal. “But since the fundamental level of reality is based on non-algorithmic understanding, the universe cannot be, and could never be, a simulation”[1:3].

Lawrence Krauss, a co-author of the study, explained: “The fundamental laws of physics cannot exist inside space and time; they create it. This signifies that any simulation, which must be utilized within a computational framework, would never fully express the true universe”[2].

The research was published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics[1:4].

  1. ScienceAlert - Physicists Just Ruled Out The Universe Being a Simulation ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. The Brighter Side - The universe is not and could never be a simulation, study finds ↩︎

  • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    23 hours ago

    This means that you could write a syntactically valid statement which cannot be proven from the axioms of that system even if you were to add more axioms.

    You can actually add the statement itself as an axiom. The point of the theorem is that no finite number of additional axioms will completely eliminate all unprovable true statements from the theory.

    Also, it relies on consistency of the formal system, because inconsistent system can prove anything. In fact, you can prove consistency of a formal system if and only if it is inconsistent.

    Information-theoretic incompleteness is new to me, but seems to be similar to Gödel’s theorem but with a focus on computation saying that if you have a complex enough system there are functions that won’t be recursively definable. As in you can’t just break it down into smaller parts that can be computed and work upwards to it.

    In fact, any function, growing fast enough, will be non-recursive. And the same applies to various similar definitions, resulting in fast-growing hierarchy.

    All in all this means that no algorithmic theory could actually describe everything. This means you cannot break all of physics down into a finite set of rules that can be used to compute reality. Ergo, we can’t be in a simulation because there are physical phenomena that exist which are impossible to compute.

    It should be noted that it doesn’t rule out analog simulations.