Fans of The Matrix listen up because a physics professor has revealed that there is evidence that we might be living in a "virtual reality simulation".
If you're anything like me then you often have your day completely derailed by invasive thoughts where suddenly the world in which we are presented comes into question.
Basically, I sometimes wonder what if my life is like the Truman Show and everyone I know is an actor... So if you're reading this, please confirm to me that you're actually real.
But enough of that, because we're talking about virtual reality simulations - which according to one professor from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, could be a very real thing.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, physicist Melvin Vopson claimed that the streams of information in the universe, including the patterns and the symmetry, mirror that of a video game.
"My studies point to a bizarre and interesting possibility that we don't live in an objective reality and that the entire universe might be just a super advanced virtual reality simulation," Vopson began.
He continued: "To put it simply, everything appears to evolve to an equilibrium state where the information content is minimal. Such behavior is fully reminiscent of the rules deployed in programming languages and computer coding.
"Simulating a super complex universe like ours would require a built-in data optimization and compression mechanism in order to reduce the computational power and the data storage requirements to run the simulation."
Vopson believes that his claims are supported by "data optimization" that we see around us all the time in things like biology and mathematics.
However, the professor also made it clear that this theory is not "definite proof" but rather "underpins the simulated universe theory." He acknowledged that his hypothesis has faced skepticism in scientific circles.
One of the intriguing aspects of Vopson's theory is its suggestion of an alternative source for the elusive fifth state of matter. The prevailing consensus in the scientific community is that the Bose-Einstein condensate, where extremely cold atoms clump together and behave as a single entity, represents the fifth state of matter.
Nonetheless, Vopson has taken a different path, proposing that information itself may possess some form of mass or influence over the universe.
He even argues that information could be the elusive "dark matter" that constitutes almost one-third of the entire universe, a cosmic enigma that has confounded scientists for decades.
Vopson has previously warned of a potential 'information catastrophe,' wherein the maximum possible amount of digital information is created, requiring maximum power to sustain it.
This dire scenario raises profound questions about the sustainability of our information-driven world.
If all of that got a bit too scientific - it certainly did for me - just spend the rest of your day wondering if any of this is actually real.
