The “universe is a simulation” hypothesis receives new physical support | Science

A physicist at Britain’s University of Portmouth says the “second law of information,” a new law of physics first developed based on the study of virus mutations, is surprisingly consistent with the simulation hypothesis, which assumes that the physical universe resembles a giant computer. Simulation.

The second law of information dynamics was proposed and put forward in 2022 by University of Portmouth researcher Melvin Fobson, in a study published in the journal AIB Advances, which he believes is a physical quantity that can mass and store information. , is compressed in computers, just as it is processed, destroyed, deleted and stored in physical systems.

Roughly, we can give an example, for example, the universe is lined with electrons, and we know that each electron has many properties, such as charge, mass, etc., but the strange thing is that all electrons in the universe are exactly the same, so an electron in your body is a distant galaxy. How do we know the properties of another electron in the band? Here, Phoebeson’s hypothesis sees information about the properties of electrons as being somehow embedded in the electrons themselves, and it’s like a physical guide for the electrons to adopt those properties, and it’s a guide that each has mass. We have mass when we stand on a scale.

This law states that the information entropy (the amount of disorder) of systems with information states must remain constant or decrease over time. This means that information systems become more organized and less random over time, contradicting the second law. Thermodynamics. , suggests that physical systems become more disordered and chaotic over time.

Because of its generality, the second law of information science is believed to have many implications for various fields of science and technology, such as information theory, computation, genetics, and cosmology, and may help explain how new mutations occur in DNA sequences.

What is simulation hypothesis?

According to a new study published in the same previous issue, the same scientist extends the lines directly with respect to the second law of information dynamics by observing the scientific consequences of the new law in many physical systems, including biology and nuclear physics. , and cosmology opens the door to implying that the universe we live in is a 3D simulation.

The simulation hypothesis began to enter the public domain about 20 years ago, when Oxford University philosophy professor Nick Bostrom suggested that it is more likely than we think that we are not living in the real world, but rather in a computer. -Designed simulation.

In physics, a similar picture emerges from the simulation hypothesis, which suggests that the universe may actually be a hologram. In his book The War of the Black Holes, British physicist Leonard Susskind suggests that the three-dimensional world is all-encompassing. Our everyday experiences in it and the galaxies, stars and planets in it are a three-dimensional image of reality encoded on a distant two-dimensional surface.

In this case, it is like putting a three-dimensional movie on a CD. The image is encoded in the form of information on the CD, and when the CD is inserted into the computer, the image is displayed on the screen. Similarly, from the point of view of this hypothesis, the universe is a large display screen and what we give it.

Are we really living in a simulation?

But despite the above, the simulation hypothesis faces many problems, as it does not explain anything about how “consciousness” can be simulated, a phenomenon that has remained an intriguing mystery in neuroscience and computational science until now.

On the other hand, a study published several years ago in the journal Science Advances pointed out that no simulation could be created that would reveal the laws of quantum physics with any advanced technology we know or can imagine. Communication between a few hundred electrons requires a computer. Larger than the size of the known universe.

A study published in the European Physical Journal A in 2014 showed that there is no method that replicates the laws of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

However, Fobson believes that his new theory can solve these problems. The second law of information dynamics changes everything, and its future applications could completely change the way scientists view the physical world.