Whoa.
Scientists have long wondered whether the central conceit of movies and stories like "The Matrix" is true: that were are living in an advanced computer simulation of reality.
Now, there may be a way to actually figure it out.
In 2003, a British scientist postulated that the chances of our universe actually being a simulation run by our descendants are very high. Nick Bostrom, a physics professor at the University of Oxford reasoned that if humanity didn't destroy itself before evolving past its humanness, then those post-human societies would have the technology and the resources to run many computer simulations of the past--our present--just like we run complex simulations of almost everything we can.
Which makes it likely that the reality being experienced right now in our universe actually exists within one of those simulations.
Still following?
Of course, scientists still haven't quite been able to wrap their heads around how our universe--whatever its true nature--works, or whether there are many other universes existing simultaneously, all with different natural laws and Big Bangs and timelines.
So the chances of our universe being a computer simulation is probably about the same as the chances that it's one of those infinite "real" universes.
But either way, how can an enquiring mind figure it out?
Martin Savage, a physics professor at the University of Washington, thinks he has a way.
Our current computer simulations are relatively weak. The most powerful computers can accurately model an area of space about a trillionth of a meter across, a bit larger than the nucleus of a single atom.
But in order to do that, those simulations use a lattice framework, which divides space-time into a four-dimensional grid. Even once computers become much more powerful, and their ability to model the universe allows them to simulate much larger areas than single atom, the underlying structure of the simulation will likely remain. Like the Matrix, it's still built on rules.
And because it's only a simulation and not the real thing, at very large sizes and very large energies, the simulation can't keep up with reality. Essentially, it's possible to find the "walls" of the box if you run fast enough and far enough. Except that cosmic rays do the running.
Of course, the technology for that kind of experiment doesn't exist yet, and won't for a very long time. Until then, perhaps it's enough to know that someday we might know.