The physical world as a virtual reality: a prima facie case

This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but the world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a three-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, that the essence of the universe is information has advantages, e.g. if matter, charge, energy and movement are aspects of information, the many conservation laws could become a single law of conservation of information. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve, and computer science could help. If one could derive core properties like space, time, light, matter and movement from information processing, such a model could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter

The nature of the physical world

xii, 345 p.; 17 cm

New pathways in science

x, 333 p.; 20 cm

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Stars and atoms,

Based on the lectures given by Professor Eddington before the British association at Oxford, and at King's college, London, in 1926.Printed in Great Britain.Mode of access: Internet

Stellar movements and the structure of the universe,

"References" at end of each chapter.Mode of access: Internet

Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science The Physical World as a Virtual Reality

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagin