The idea that reality might be a kind of cosmic software has shifted from late-night dorm debate to a live question in ...

In the 4 th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato theorised that humans do not perceive the world as it really is. All we can see is shadows on a wall. In 2003, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom ...

For more than two decades, some scientists have pondered the possibility that life as we know is actually an unfathomably complex simulation. While some suggest looking for “glitches” to find evidence ...

The notion that our universe might be a giant simulation has intrigued scientists and philosophers for decades. Recent advancements in technology and theoretical physics have reignited this debate, ...

Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow ...

Could we be trapped inside a simulated reality, rather than the physical universe we usually assume? It’s a tantalizing theory, long theorized by philosophers and popularized by the 1999 blockbuster ...

What if everything we know about the world is just a simulation? This thought-provoking question has been at the center of the Simulation Theory, a concept that has become increasingly popular in ...

It’s not surprising anymore to encounter someone who works in tech and entertains “the simulation hypothesis,” which is the idea that we are probably living inside a virtual reality program. But I ...

Elon Musk and others find it plausible that our experiences result from events in a computer simulation, just like the characters in the Matrix movies. An alternative view, supported by both common ...

Computer code appears during an immersive reality screening of the 1999 movie 'The Matrix,' held in Inglewood, Calif., on May 28, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images In the most talked-about ...