The sci-fi movie The Matrix may not be far from the truth.
Some scientists and philosophers are now debating whether we might actually be living inside a simulation.
Earlier this year, physicist Dr. Melvin Vopson from the University of Portsmouth presented evidence supporting the simulation hypothesis.
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The simulation hypothesis suggests that our entire universe and reality could just be hyper-enhanced reality illusions.
He believes recent developments in the field of information physics 'appear to support this possibility' in that the physical world is made up of bits of information.
Vopson goes even further by claiming that information might have physical weight and could be a key part of the universe.
He thinks that information could be what we call 'dark matter', which is a mysterious substance that makes up about a third of the universe.
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In 2022, the physicist discovered a new principle called the second law of infodynamics. It states that in a system of isolated information, the amount of disorder tends to stay the same or decrease over time.
Essentially, there is some kind of mechanism governing the chaos rather than random chance.
"I knew then that this revelation had far-reaching implications across various scientific disciplines,” Dr Vopson described.
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“What I wanted to do next is put the law to the test and see if it could further support the simulation hypothesis by moving it on from the philosophical realm to mainstream science.”
Dr. Vopson believes this could support the idea that we’re living in a simulation. He applied this principle to different fields like genetics and cosmology and found that the universe’s patterns of symmetry could be explained by this idea.
"Symmetry principles play an important role with respect to the laws of nature, but until now there has been little explanation as to why that could be,” he added.
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“My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature's inclination towards it."
Furthermore, nature favours order and organisation.
Dr. Vopson explained that the way nature reduces extra information is similar to how a computer gets rid of unnecessary code to save space and 'optimise power consumption.'
This idea 'supports the idea that we’re living in a simulation.'
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The professor also devised an experiment to finally answer the mystery of whether we're in a simulation.
In a statement from December, he said: “There is a growing community out there looking seriously at the possibility that information is more fundamental to everything than we think.
“If information is a key component of everything in the universe, it would make sense that a vast computer somewhere is in control.
“Assuming the universe is indeed a simulation, then it must contain a lot of information bits hidden everywhere around us. I’ve devised an experiment that proposes a way of extracting this information to prove it’s there.”
His experiment is based on the idea that information has a physical presence and that even the smallest particles have their own 'information DNA'.
“We can measure the information content of a particle by erasing it. If we delete the information from the particles, we can then look at what’s left."