One of the popular conspiracy theories claims that the world around us actually exists only in a virtual form. In that case, how to prove that this is just a matrix, and not real reality? In social networks and on forums, you can find stories of people who believe that they have witnessed a "software failure" ...
Glitch in the Matrix: Examples
So, one of the users reported that he and a friend once went to a Chinese restaurant. There they both ordered chicken with rice and egg rolls for lunch. But when the user's friend opened his container, the chicken was not there, but there were shrimp, noodles, and fried rice. In the container of the narrator was the same. Friends have already decided that they mixed orders.
But then the narrator's friend for some reason opened his container again. It contained chicken, white rice, and egg roll. Both were shocked...
Another forum visitor said that he once had a very realistic dream. In the dream, he was a fishmonger. He remembered all the details in great detail: he allegedly woke up early in the morning, redid his household chores, had breakfast and went to the docks, where he bought a catch from the fishermen for sale. At the same time, I bargained because the fish was not very fresh. Then the man went to the market and traded all day...
“It was so real,” recalls the narrator. “I talked with friends, smoked cheap cigarettes, bargained with customers, dined, drank tea, and just lived all day. In the evening I washed my hands, counted the proceeds, paid the rent and went home. "I cooked some fish that I didn't have time to sell with vegetables and rice that I also traded. I drank tea again, relaxed, and then took a hot bath. Lying in the bath, I smoked, and then went to bed."
Waking up the next morning, the man was about to go back to the docks for fish, but found that it was a dream and he was not a fishmonger by profession. In the dream, he was unmarried, but in real life he had a wife.
Since the day was a holiday, the couple planned to go to Oregon to ski. Also in a dream, a man smoked, but in real life - no. And most importantly - in a dream he was a Chinese and spoke Chinese, but in reality he was an American and spoke, of course, in English. In addition, he knew Spanish and a little Russian ... "It was very strange. I have never worked in a fish market," the author of the message writes.
Many stories are connected with the suddenly awakened knowledge of foreign languages. So, one of the users recalls: “A few years ago I was with my (now ex) girlfriend. Waking up in the morning, we chatted a little in pure French. I got up, went to the shower and suddenly realized that neither of us spoke French.
When I got out of the shower, I asked my friend about it. She remembered, but was not as embarrassed as I was. I can't even remember what we talked about because I don't know French. The brain is a strange thing."
And here is another user's comment on this post: "I was in Paris on Christmas Eve and went to a nightclub. I had a lot of drinks and jumped in a taxi with a girl from the club. She said in the morning that she was amazed at how fluently I spoke French. I told her that I didn't know French at all, but she assured me that I chatted in perfect French with a taxi driver for about 30 minutes."
It can be assumed that as a result of a "failure" we are thrown into another "program", where we order other dishes in a restaurant, live a completely different life, or are able to speak languages that are not known to us in this life. But we perceive it as a "dream" or "glitch" ...
Photos of people in exactly the same clothes, seemingly not familiar with each other, have also been published on the Web. One picture shows two cars with exactly the same numbers. According to the authors of the photo, this can also be considered arguments in favor of the Matrix ...
Our matrix was created by an advanced civilization
Back in 2003, the Swedish transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom suggested that our reality is a simulation, the result of computer simulations carried out by a civilization that has reached a high stage of development. And in 2012, a team of physicists from Germany and the United States figured out how to test this experimentally. They proceeded from the fact that the computers of the future work on a quantum basis.
In this case, the resolution limit of the spatial "cells" of the simulated reality cannot be infinite. Indeed, there is a Greisen - Zatsepin - Kuzmin limit, which limits the energies of cosmic radiation. And humanity will learn to model a space of such parameters as ours in about 140 years.
So it is possible that the Universe consists of many realities that model each other. And what reality is real, it is not known ...
Margarita Troitsyna
Even the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who lived almost two and a half millennia ago, suggested that our world is not real. With the advent of computer technology and the acquisition of virtual reality, humanity is increasingly coming to the understanding that the world in which it lives can be a simulation of reality - a matrix, and who created it and why, we will most likely never know.
Even today, having, for example, a Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer (China), capable of performing almost one hundred quadrillion calculations per second, it is possible to simulate several million years of human history in a matter of days. But quantum computers are on the way, which will work millions of times faster than the current ones. What parameters will computers have in fifty, one hundred years?
Now imagine that a certain civilization has been developing for many billions of years, and in comparison with it, ours, which is only a few thousand, is just a newborn baby. Do you think these highly developed beings are able to create a computer or some other machine that can simulate our world? It seems that the question of whether it is possible to create a matrix has, in principle, been resolved positively (esoreiter.ru).
Who and why would create a matrix?
So, the matrix can be created; even our civilization has come close to this. But another question arises: who allowed this, since from the point of view of morality, this action is not entirely legal and justified. What if something goes wrong in this illusory world? Isn't the creator of such a matrix taking on too much responsibility?
On the other hand, it can be assumed that we live in a matrix created, so to speak, illegally - by someone who is just having fun in this way, and therefore does not even question the morality of his virtual game.
There is also such a possible option: some highly developed society launched this simulation for scientific purposes, for example, as a diagnostic test to find out what and why went wrong with the real world, and subsequently correct the situation.
The Matrix is revealed through its flaws
It can be assumed that in the case of a sufficiently high-quality simulation of reality, no one inside the matrix will even understand that this is an artificial world. But here's the problem: any program, even the most advanced, can fail.
These are the ones we constantly notice, although we cannot rationally explain them. For example, the deja vu effect, when it seems to us that we have already lived through some situation, but in principle this cannot be. The same applies to many other mysterious facts and phenomena. For example, where do people disappear without a trace, and sometimes right in front of witnesses? Why does some stranger suddenly begin to meet us several times a day? Why is one person seen in several places at the same time? .. Search the Internet: there are thousands of such cases described there. And how many undescribed things are stored in the memory of people? ..
The matrix is based on mathematics
The world we live in can be represented as a binary code. In general, the Universe is better explained by mathematical than verbal language, for example, even our DNA was solved with the help of a computer during the implementation of the Human Genome Project.
It turns out that, in principle, on the basis of this genome, it is possible to create a virtual person. And if it is possible to build one such conditional personality, then it means the whole world (the only question is the power of the computer).
Many researchers of the matrix phenomenon assume that someone has already created such a world, and this is exactly the simulation in which we live. Using the same mathematics, scientists are trying to determine whether this is true. However, while they express only guesses ...
The Anthropic Principle as a Matrix Proof
Scientists have long been surprised to state that on Earth, in some incomprehensible way, ideal conditions for life have been created (the anthropic principle). Even our solar system is unique! At the same time, in the space of the Universe visible by the most powerful telescopes, there is nothing else like it.
The question arises: why did these conditions suit us so well? Maybe they are artificially created? For example, in some laboratory on a universal scale?.. Or maybe there is no Universe and this vast starry sky is also a simulation?
Further, on the other side of the model in which we are, there may not even be people, but beings whose appearance, structure, state it is difficult for us to even imagine. And in this program there may be aliens who are well aware of the conditions of this game or even are its conductors (regulators) - remember the movie "The Matrix". That's why they're practically all-powerful in this simulation...
The anthropic principle echoes the Fermi paradox, according to which in an infinite universe there should be many worlds similar to ours. And the fact that at the same time we remain alone in the Universe leads to a sad thought: we are in the matrix, and its creator is interested in just such a scenario - “loneliness of the mind” ...
Parallel worlds as proof of the matrix
The theory of the multiverse - the existence of parallel universes with an infinite set of all possible parameters - is another indirect proof of the matrix. Judge for yourself: where did all these universes come from and what role do they play in the universe?
However, if we allow the simulation of reality, then a lot of similar worlds is quite understandable: these are numerous models with different variables that the creator of the matrix needs, say, to test one or another scenario in order to get the best result.
God created the matrix
According to this theory, our matrix was created by the Almighty, and in almost the same way as we create virtual reality in computer games: using binary code. At the same time, the Creator not only simulated the real world, but also put the concept of the Creator into the consciousness of people. Hence the numerous religions, and faith in higher powers, and the worship of God.
This idea has its differences in the interpretation of the Creator. Some believe that the Almighty is just a programmer, albeit of the highest level inaccessible to a person, who also has a supercomputer of a universal scale.
Others believe that God creates this Universe in some other way, for example, cosmic or - in our understanding - mystical. In this case, this world can also, albeit with a stretch, be considered a matrix, but then it is not clear what should be considered the real world? ..
What is outside the matrix?
Considering the world as a matrix, we naturally ask ourselves: what is beyond it? A supercomputer surrounded by programmers - the creators of numerous matrix programs?
However, these programmers themselves may not be real, that is, the Universe can be infinite both in width (many parallel worlds within one program) and in depth (many layers of the simulation itself). It was this theory that Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom put forward in his time, who believed that the creatures that created our matrix could be modeled themselves, and the creators of these post-humans, in turn, too - and so on ad infinitum. We see something similar in the film The Thirteenth Floor, although only two levels of simulation are shown there.
The main question remains: who created the real world, and in general, does it exist? If not, then who created all these self-nested matrices? Of course, you can argue like this ad infinitum. It's all one thing to try to understand: if this whole world was created by God, then who created God himself? According to psychologists, persistent reflection on such topics is a direct path to a psychiatric hospital ...
Matrix is a much deeper concept
Some researchers have a question: is it even worth creating all these complex matrix programs with a multibillion-dollar number of people, not to mention endless universes? Maybe everything is much simpler, because each person interacts only with a certain set of people and situations. But what if, besides the main character, that is, you, all other people are fakes? After all, it is no coincidence that with certain mental and emotional efforts, a person can radically change the world around him. It turns out that either each person has his own world, his own matrix, or is each of us the only player in the only matrix? And that one player is you! And even the simulation article you're reading right now has the code you need to develop (or play), just like everything else around you.
It is, of course, hard to believe in the latter, because in this case there are infinitely many matrices not only in depth and width, but also in the infinity of other dimensions, of which we have no idea yet. Of course, you can convince yourself that a superprogrammer is behind all this. But how then is he different from the Almighty? And who is above it? There is no answer, and can there be one? ..
Arguments and facts for the fact that the world is a simulation for us and we live in a matrix. Have you ever thought about the fact that our world can be inside some kind of supercomputer that models hundreds of billions of planets, Universes, intelligent races, as well as the behavior of beings, Gods and familiar things. It models consciousness and feelings, habits and friends. Everything.
At first, this may seem like nonsense, and as one of the frequent commentators on my channel said, “for this they used to burn at the stake and such thoughts were considered heresy.” But is this heresy? And for whom? For people who do not want to consider alternative theories of our world, this can be complete nonsense! They are content to be the center of the mega-world, they shake their uniqueness like a huge ingot of gold, posing as natives from ancient times who are at an early stage of their development.
I will say this, if you read some of the works of Plato, you will understand that the theory of the unreality of the world is not new. Humanity did not begin to think about this when Hollywood introduced the world to the Matrix trilogy and other films based on the idea of the unreality and programming of the world. Filmmakers often use popular ideas for their films. But to their credit, they were able to raise the discussion of the Matrix to a new level, and many scientists began to look for evidence on Earth. And then I will give you "Revelations", which may make you take a fresh look at the theory of the unreality of the world.
1. Modern computers are capable of creating simulations and simulations of various events. Even your phone is capable of more than your brain. It processes hundreds or thousands of operations per second. In a few decades, computers will be so powerful that they will create simulations of events using sentient beings that have reason and intelligence and they will not understand that they are in a simulation. Do you doubt it?
2. No matter how perfect the simulation program is, it may contain errors that require correction. Perhaps there is no such person who has not experienced the feeling that these events have already occurred and seem to be repeated. Oh yes, deja vu! Ghosts, miracles and other unknown in the world is a software error and many people understand that some kind of nonsense is happening, but they are afraid to express their opinion.
3. Our entire Universe consists of numbers, but what are computer programs made of? Are you catching up? Even the names of God and Lucifer have numbers. Numbers play a key role in our lives. Mathematics underlies the binary code with which programs are written and the same simulation and modeling is based on this. If people could create a simulation, then why couldn't others? Do you still doubt and think I'm a liar? We continue!
4. Why is our planet a planet with almost ideal conditions for life? Why not Venus or Mars, why people on Earth? We are far from the Sun, the Earth's magnetic field protects us from radiation, we have water and food, a temperate climate and many other things, as if artificially created for an ideal life. Isn't it too perfect? The answer lies on the surface. These conditions are created in the simulation.
5. Theory about parallel worlds and multi-universes. It is logical that for their simulations and modeling, our creators need to test various options. It's like updating programs, including on your gadgets. Everywhere there are errors that need to be fixed and a new version of the update should be released. Billions of simulation options help with this.
6. Earth is in near perfect conditions! But logically, in the entire Universe there are billions of planets that are both younger and older than ours. But for some reason, humanity has not found any intelligent beings in the universe, which is rather strange, given the scope of outer space. In this case, several theories are born about why we have not made contact with other civilizations. According to the first version of modeling or simulation, we were specially settled away from everyone in order to observe how we would cope with the task alone. Will we be able to get to other inhabited planets or not? And here the theory of multi-universes is connected, where there are a different number of inhabited planets. It is possible that in ours we are alone, and in other Universes a different number of inhabited planets. There may be those in which there are no signs of life at all, why not? Well, the last theory may be that we were programmed to consider ourselves the only ones in the entire universe to see what happens. Difficult to understand? In my opinion, no, everything is as simple as the world itself :-)
7. Let's look at how God can fit into the whole idea of biomass, which is food for worms :-) Why does God have to be something, hovering in the clouds, surrounded by angels? Isn't a programmer the same Creator who is able to create worlds and their inhabitants? Does the programmer want us to be his slaves and serve him? As we know from the example of people, we are all different. Some are disinterested and do not need too much attention, others want to enslave the world and make everyone their subjects. Or maybe he didn’t want to be known about him at all and his creations themselves guessed about his existence and came up with a religion in which his desires were allegedly prescribed. And what about the idea of creating the world in 7 days. I think that there is no need to explain anything at all. Programmers are workaholics, but sometimes they still take a break from their numbers.
8. What is at the edge of the universe? And why is it growing? As many people know, games are complemented by various modifications, levels, updates and the game can grow from small to huge. But what if our programmers are constantly working on our universe, improving and increasing it in size?
9. And what if the simulation is multi-level and our creators are another simulation, and so on ad infinitum. This is similar to the idea of artificial intelligence, which trains itself and creates its own kind. Do you know that people are working on a similar program now? Does it sound fantastic now? But if this is an endless simulation, then where are the true Creators, the Originals, who created this whole big game?
10. What if all the distant galaxies in our universe are empty and made in order to create for us the illusion of something big? And suddenly it's just scenery, like in Hollywood movies. The outside is beautiful, but the inside of the planet can be just a binary code, and so we need to get to the most extreme corners of the universe to check it out. But by this point, our Creators can create an update and run it into our simulation, or simply erase our memory.
ITC readers got acquainted with the basics of the hypothesis about the "Matrix" back in December last year - the corresponding one then caused a real flurry of discussion.
Let us briefly recall that, despite the seemingly absurdity of the assumptions about the unreality of our existence, scientists now take the hypothesis of the artificial origin of "objective reality" in all seriousness. Although it still remains unproven, more and more data is being discovered every day that points to its correctness.
And recently, researchers from Canada, Italy and England announced that they managed to find another proof of the illusory nature of our existence. To do this, they studied the inhomogeneity of the CMB (the "afterglow" of the Big Bang) and found the "first substantial evidence" that our visible world is a hologram.
Scientists presented their scientific research in the form of a visual image:
The illustration provided by the researchers shows a temporary tape. On the left, at its very beginning, there is a cloudy and fuzzy holographic phase. Fuzziness is due to the fact that time and space are not yet formed. Here the Universe is as close as possible to the time of the Big Bang - it is allegedly flat. This is a kind of matrix, from which the volume then arises.
By the end of the holographic phase, the space takes on geometric shapes - shown in the 3rd ellipse - and is already described by Einstein's equations. After 375,000 years, the relic or cosmic microwave background radiation appears. It contains templates for the development of stars and galaxies of a later version of the universe - the far right image.
In other words, scientists have come to the conclusion that our three-dimensional space, along with time, is contained in 2D boundaries and is a projection of some flat universe from another dimension.
“Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions is actually a distortion of a flat two-dimensional field. says study co-author Professor Kostas Skenderis. “Essentially, we found that our universe is a three-dimensional hologram on a two-dimensional surface.”
For ease of understanding, the professor "not quite correctly" compares this phenomenon with watching 3D movies. The viewer sees the width, depth, volume of objects, but at the same time understands that their source is a flat cinema screen. Only in our reality, we not only observe the depth of objects, but we can also feel them.
“A similar situation is with holographic cards,” adds the professor, “where a three-dimensional image is encoded on a plane. The only difference is that in our case, the whole universe is encoded on the plane.”
Thus, scientists again came to the conclusion that what we see is more of a "fantasy" of our brain than an objective reality.
Finally, Professor Skenderis noted: “The hologram is a huge leap forward in understanding the structure of the Universe and the moment of its creation. Einstein's general theory of relativity works great when it comes to large scales. When research goes down to the quantum level, it starts to fall apart. Scientists have been working for decades to reconcile quantum theory and Einstein's theory of gravity. Some believe that this can be achieved with a holographic representation. We hope we are closer to that moment."
US and German physicists Silas Bean, Zohre Dawoudi, and Martin Savage have come up with an experimental way to test a philosophical idea known as the simulation hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, there is a possibility that we live inside a huge computer model that some posthumans have launched to study their own past. Despite, let's be honest, their dubious natural science value, the work of Bean, Davoudy and Savage deserves detailed coverage: here it is quantum chromodynamics, and philosophy, and in general - it's not every day that physicists offer to test ideas inspired by the film "The Matrix".
Nick Bostrom and his simulation
In 2003, the famous Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom published in Philosophical Quarterly work under the almost fantastic title "Are we all living in a computer simulation?". It should be noted that Bostrom is not some marginal living on the outskirts of modern philosophy. This is one of the most important figures of transhumanism of our time, co-founder of the World Association of Transhumanists (established in 1998, now renamed Humanity Plus). He is the recipient of many prestigious awards and his anthropic work has been translated into more than 100 languages.
transhumanism- a worldview based on understanding the achievements and prospects of science, recognizing the possibility and necessity of fundamental changes in the person himself with the help of advanced technologies. The purpose of these changes is the elimination of suffering, aging, death, as well as the strengthening of the physical, mental and psychological capabilities of people.
Anthropic principle- the principle formulated in the form of the formula "We see the Universe like this, because only in such a Universe could an observer, a person, have arisen."
Theory of everything- a hypothetical physical and mathematical theory that describes all known fundamental interactions (strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational)
Before proceeding to the formulation of Bostrom's main result, let's get acquainted with some concepts (based on the critical work by Danila Medvedev "Are we living in Nick Bostrom's speculation?"). Under the post-human civilization (consisting of post-humans) is understood "the civilization of the descendants of man, who have changed to such an extent that they can no longer be considered human." The main difference between this civilization and the modern one will be the incredible computing capabilities that it will have. A simulation is a program that simulates the consciousness of one or more people, perhaps even the whole of humanity. A historical simulation is, accordingly, a simulation of a historical process in which many simulated persons take part.
In his work, Bostrom adheres to the concept that consciousness depends on intelligence (computing power), the structure of individual parts, the logical relationship between them, and much more, but does not depend at all on the carrier, that is, biological tissue - the human brain. This means that consciousness can also be realized as a set of electrical impulses in some computer. Given that the work is about simulations created by posthumans, the people modeled inside the simulation (Bostrom calls them a civilization of a lower level compared to the civilization that launched the simulation) are conscious. For them, the model will appear to be reality.
In order to assess the theoretical feasibility of such simulations in principle, Bostrom makes several assessments. So, in the most rough approximation, the computing power of the human brain is limited to about 10 17 operations per second. At the same time, the amount of information received by a person is about 10 8 bits per second. Based on this, Bostrom concludes that to simulate the entire history of mankind, it would take about 10 33 - 10 36 operations (calculating 50 years per person and estimating the total number of all people who have existed on the planet to date at 100 billion people).
If we talk about modeling the entire Universe from the time of the Big Bang to the present, and not just the history of mankind, then the physicist Seth Lloyd from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published in 2002 in Physical Review Letters, in which he gave calculations of the required capacities. It turned out that this would require a machine with 1090 bits of memory, which would have to perform 10120 logical operations.
Emblem "Humanity Plus"
These numbers (both Bostrom's and Lloyd's) seem simply unbelievable. However, in 2000, the same Lloyd published another remarkable work - he tried to calculate the maximum power of a computer with a mass of 1 kilogram and a volume of one cubic decimeter, based on considerations of quantum mechanics. He succeeded (pdf) - it turns out that this amount of matter can perform about 10 50 operations per second. Therefore, based on the power of such an extreme computer, the simulation that Bostrom is talking about does not seem too fantastic. Lloyd even estimated the time it would take to reach such capacities - assuming that the power of computers continues to grow according to Moore's law (which, of course, is completely doubtful: some scientists predict that the law will be in 75 years). So, this time was only 250 years.
However, back to Bostrom. Based on the above estimates, the Swedish philosopher not only concluded that the simulation is possible, but also made a paradoxical conclusion. Bostrom claims that at least one of the following three statements is true (the so-called Bostrom trilemma):
- Humanity will die out without becoming a post-civilization;
- Humanity will develop into a post-civilization, which for some reason will not be interested in modeling the past;
- We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
It follows from this that if we are optimists and do not believe in the extinction of mankind and, in addition, are convinced of the curiosity of our descendants, then point three is fulfilled: we most likely live in a computer simulation. By the way, Bostrom generally has many paradoxical conclusions in his work - for example, about the likelihood of modeling people without consciousness, that is, the existence of a world in which only a few are endowed with consciousness, and the rest are "shadow zombies" (as the philosopher himself calls them ). The philosopher also interestingly discusses the ethical aspects of modeling, as well as the fact that most simulations must end someday, which means that, with a probability of almost equal to one, we live in a world that must end its existence (for more details with these arguments, see see the partial Russian translation of the article).
Despite all its popularity, Bostrom's conclusions have repeatedly become the object of criticism. In particular, opponents point to gaps in the philosopher's argument, as well as to the large number of hidden assumptions present in his reasoning regarding a number of fundamental issues - for example, the nature of consciousness and the potential ability of simulated individuals to become self-aware. In general, an unequivocal answer to the question "Do we live in the Matrix?" one should not expect from philosophers (as, by the way, on other, no less "simple" questions: what is consciousness, what is reality, etc.). So let's move on to physics.
Physicists and their approach
Bostrom does not hide the fact that he was inspired to work, among other things, by science fiction films. Among them, of course, are "The Matrix" (idea of simulation) and "13th Floor" (idea of nested simulations)
Some time ago, a preprint of the work of physicists from the USA and Germany, Silas Bean, Zohre Dawoudi and Martin Savage, appeared on the arXiv.org website. These scientists decided to play the game proposed by Bostrom. They asked themselves this question: if the entire universe is a computer simulation, then is it possible to find evidence of this by physical methods? To do this, they tried to imagine how the physics of the simulated world would differ from the physics of the real world.
As a possible tool for modeling, they took quantum chromodynamics - perhaps the most advanced physical theory that exists today. As for the actual modeling, they assumed that posthumans would carry it out on a spatial grid with some rather small spatial step. It is clear that both assumptions are rather controversial: firstly, posthumans would certainly prefer to use the theory of everything (which would undoubtedly already be at their disposal) for simulation. Secondly, the numerical methods of posthumans should differ from ours in much the same way as a nuclear reactor differs from a stone axe. However, without these assumptions, the work of physicists in general would be impossible.
Here, by the way, it is appropriate to note that the modeling of processes occurring in a fixed region of space is a rather actively developing area of computational physics. So far, of course, the successes are small: physicists manage to simulate a piece of the world with a diameter of no more than a few (from 2.5 to 5.8) femtometers (1 femtometer is equal to 10 -15 meters) with a step b = 0.1 femtometer. Nevertheless, models of this kind are of great theoretical interest. For example, they can help in calculating what happens under conditions that are unattainable in modern accelerators. Or, for example, with the help of modeling, it will be possible to obtain some predictions of the properties of the vacuum and compare them with experimental data - and this, perhaps, will just prompt physicists to ideas regarding the mentioned theory of everything.
To begin with, Bean, Davoudy, and Savage assessed the possibilities of simulations. It turned out that for a fixed step of 0.1 femtometer, the size of the simulated area grows exponentially (that is, just like the computing power of computers in Moore's law) - this is the result of extrapolation of data for almost 20 years of the history of this field of research. It turns out that the modeling of a cubic meter of matter based on the laws of quantum chromodynamics with a step b = 0.1 femtometer should be expected in about 140 years (the indicator grows by about an order of magnitude in 10 years). Considering that the diameter of the visible Universe is about 1027 meters, while maintaining the regular growth (which, as noted above, is unlikely), the simulation of the required volume can be achieved in 140 + 270 = 410 years (but this is only with a fixed parameter b). However, the scientists themselves do not give such figures, limiting themselves to the next 140 years.
Then the scientists tried to evaluate the possible limitations on the physics of such a model and found, frankly, amusing things. They found that in a simulated universe, there should be a break in the spectrum of cosmic rays at certain energies. In theory, such a break really exists - this is the Grisen - Zatsepin - Kuzmin limit, which is 50 exa-electronvolts. It is related to the fact that high-energy particles must interact with photons of the background microwave radiation and, as a result, lose energy. Here, however, two difficulties arise. First, for this limit to be an artifact of a computer model, its spatial step must be 11 orders of magnitude smaller than b = 0.1 femtometer. Secondly, the presence of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit has not yet been proven in practice. There are many conflicting results in this direction. So, according to one of them, there really is a cliff. According to others, particles with energies exceeding this limit reach the Earth's surface, and they arrive from rather dark regions of space (that is, they are not the product of the activity of active galactic nuclei closest to us).
However, scientists have another way to check - the distribution of high-energy cosmic rays must be anisotropic (that is, not the same in different spatial directions). This is due to the assumption that the calculations are carried out on a cubic grid - this is exactly what the grid should be, according to physicists, from considerations of space-time isotropy. At the same time, physicists do not discuss the possibility of detecting radiation anisotropy. It is not even clear what kind of instruments are needed for such studies - are the already existing instruments sufficient (the Fermi space observatory, for example)? In general, an unequivocal answer to the question "Do we live in the Matrix?" from physicists too it is not necessary to expect.
Finally
Of course, the reader may feel disappointed at this point. Like, how is it: read-read, and the answer to the main question "Do we live in the Matrix?" never received it. This, however, was expected, and here's why. For philosophy, the simulation hypothesis is just one of many versions of being. These versions, if they compete with each other, then only in the minds of their supporters and opponents, that is, they are objects of faith that do not claim to be objective.
As for physicists, a very interesting one has recently appeared: an American professor from the University of Louisiana Rhett Alleyn (Rhett Allain) analyzed the physical component of the Bad Piggies game from Rovio, the company that created Angry Birds. He did this exactly in order to determine the possible diameter of the green pigs from the game, if they really exist (the diameter, by the way, turned out to be 96 centimeters). Now, the work of Silas Bean, Zohre Dawoudi and Martin Savage is the same kind of exercise, only with slightly more complex objects and intricate mathematics. In general, this is nothing more than an entertaining gymnastics for the mind - but, like any gymnastics, it is useful. Thanks to her, the reader now knows the Bostrom trilemma and the size of the hard drive, on which information about the entire Universe can be written. It is interesting.