Mind-Blown: Is the Universe a Computer Simulation?

By John Michael Godier

One of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our universe is whether it's even real. While it may intuitively seem to be, after all we do live in and interact with reality our entire lives, the truth is that the matter is far more complicated than you might think. In fact it's so complicated that science itself cannot rule out that this universe may not exist at all. In fact, it's completely possible that we live in a computer simulation.

The idea that the universe isn't real isn't a new one, in fact it's very old. All religions are to varying extents based on the idea that this is all a simulation of sorts created by a deity. That idea began to move into the realm of science and philosophy with Rene Descartes' 'Evil Demon' concept. Descartes said that if you were possessed by a demon, you could never quite be sure that you weren't being deceived by it into thinking that the world around you was something that it wasn't.

An updated version of that concept goes like this. Your brain is entirely dependent on sensory input. Your eyes, ears, sense of touch, taste and smell all determine how your brain perceives the universe around it. But there is a catch: senses may not always tell the truth, as optical illusions show us. As a result, if you could trick all five senses at the same time, you could make a person believe in something that isn't reality. This is called the "brain in a vat" thought experiment and is the philosophical concept that underlies "The Matrix" series of movies. The idea is that if your brain was in a jar being fed sensory information with electrodes, you would live in virtual reality forever never knowing that there was an entire other real universe outside of the one you were being led to believe you live in.

But that's not the only possible way that the universe could be a fake. There is also the intriguing possibility that we are really artificial intelligences embedded inside a computer simulation. While this may sound outlandish, it's actually not and there are several aspects of our universe that might even hint that all is not as it seems. Enough so that none other than Neil de Grasse Tyson threw his towel in the ring at the recent 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate saying that he would not be surprised in the least if this all were a simulation.

The most marked of these phenomenon is quantum wave function collapse. In nature, subatomic particles can exist in different states. They can have different energies or move at different speeds etc. etc.. But in quantum mechanics, particles are thought of as existing in all possible states at the same time including existing in two places at the same time ... until you look at them. Then they choose a state to exist in. Yes, that's right, you can change the behavior of a subatomic particle just by looking at it. Its quantum wave function collapses the moment you look at it because when it's observed its actual position becomes known and it's no longer a matter of probability but of reality. In such a state of affairs, is the universe really there when you aren't looking at it? Well, in a sense, no it's not. Into the rabbit hole we go . . .


You may be thinking that this is all crazy hogwash, but think again. The phenomenon of quantum superpositions and wave function collapses are scientifically observable. The experiments can be repeated time and time again always yielding the same result. A famous example of this is the double-slit experiment. The way the experiment is set up is that a piece of paper with two slits in it is set up in front of a wall. Then we fire a beam of photons at the piece of paper one by one. When the experiment isn't being measured, i.e. looked at, then on the far wall we see an interference pattern like you would get if you had two ocean waves passing through the slits. But once you put detectors on either side of the paper and measure it, the interference pattern disappears and you see only two bars of light on the wall. This is because by looking at the photons, we have collapsed their wave function and forced them to either go through one hole, or the other. While this is all perfectly scientific, it also shows that observation is an integral part of our universe despite it being counterintuitive and, well, just plain weird. What does this point to? What is the nature of a universe that doesn't quite exist when you're not looking at it? I can't say.


Here's where we've left the rabbit hole entirely and are in some place else. Nature may, and I very much stress the word may, actually need conscious minds to perceive it in order to exist at all. Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner proposed this very thing in the 1960's. He argued that quantum wave function required more than just an observer, but a conscious one and without one the wave functions of the universe would never collapse. At that point, the universe is simply a place were it's not possible for anything to happen and the only things that can exist are quantum superpositions. He then took this even further and suggested a line of consciousnesses observing each other all the way up to some sort of universal consciousness somehow observing itself into existence. While contentious and very much still disputed, this was all backed with more than just woo but actual physics. Crackpot Wigner was not. Did he misinterpret? Well, the current consensus is that he probably did. But current consensuses can be wrong.


But what of us being artificial intelligences embedded in simulation you ask? Well the answer to that may lie in a modern philosophical thought experiment similar to the brain in a vat concept. The Matrix and being a brain in a vat is an interesting thought experiment, but not a very likely one. I mean really, using humans as batteries? There are far better batteries out there than us. However when you consider that we may be some sort of artificially intelligent sub function in a computer simulation, things become really creepy. And that one may not just be possible, but even probable.

The whole thing comes down to a thought experiment that Philosopher Nick Bostrom at Oxford University has developed that may shed some light on whether or not we live in a simulation. His argument is simple, one of three things must be true.


Number 1. Humans never reach a level of technology that allows us to produce simulated realities, or the computers needed to create such realities are so complex that they cannot be physically constructed.


Number 2. Any civilization that gains the ability to simulate the universe simply doesn't go through with it either due to it costing too much in energy or ethical considerations over holding artificially intelligent entities captive in a simulated reality.


Number 3. We almost certainly live in a simulation.


That's certainly food for thought. And somewhat hard to shoot down when you think about it. And it begs a question, if this is a simulation, then who created it? Personally, I'm not sure I want to know. Could it be that there really is a creator of some sort? Could all religions have been preprogrammed into the system by the great God-programmer and thusly are all simultaneously valid? As a science-minded guy, those questions make my head hurt. I think I'll take the blue pill please.


Interestingly enough though there may be a way to scientifically test whether we live in a simulation or not. There's always been talk in physics that does seem rather weird that certain fundamental values in the universe are just right for life to exist. While that may just be due to the possibility that an almost infinite number of parallel universes exist and we just happen to be in the one that's just right, there's also the possibility that there is just one universe and the values just happen to be just right. The problem is that the odds of that are, well, astronomical. But there's a deeper level than that.


While we don't know if this is all a simulation or not, we do know that if someone were to create such a simulation, it has to follow certain rules. There has to be some sort of structure to it, an underlying lattice that holds it all together. At its smallest scale, the simulator must have a bottom line in the same way that how a television works. If you look at a television from a distance, you see a picture that conveys a message. You see a movie with an unfolding story before you. But if you look very closely and hit mute, you see only pixels and can't tell what the overall movie is about. The pixels are the limit to a television's ability to create a story, or a universe, for you. The universe may be the same. At some infinitely small point, we should be able to see the universe's pixels.


Scientists such as Silas Beane and his colleagues suspect that we might be able to do just that by studying the behavior of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays lose energy and change direction as they propagate. However, we know how much energy those particles have. The odd thing is that when you look at it, the whole thing might be consistent with the kind of thing you would expect to see if there was an underlying lattice governing the behavior of the universe. While not yet proven or studied deeply, we might be able to tell if this is a simulation or not by determining just how cosmic rays scatter. If it really does end up being consistent with a simulation, then things will get very interesting indeed. But, we could also be misinterpreting things. Much scientific study is needed before any conclusions can be drawn from this approach.

Another way of thinking about all of this is video games. A video game is just a mathematical construct, a program. Oddly enough, the universe also works on mathematics. Does that mean we live in God's video game? Possibly. And maybe we can some day hack the universe. Or worse, our games will become so advanced that Super Mario realizes that he's just a simulation and refuses to play anymore. But then one has to ask, if we go trying to game the system and we figure out what we really are then whomever created the simulation may simply choose to shut it down. Let's hope God doesn't get bored easily.

But there's a problem with the whole thing. As cosmologist Max Tegmark points out, if we do live in a simulation, then some day we will create a simulation of our own. And then our simulated universe will create a simulation and so on leading to huge numbers of simulations running within simulations. Perhaps even infinitely so, and that takes infinite computing power. Could there be such a thing that allows infinite computing power? Seems highly unlikely. Maybe, as Freud may or may not have said, a cigar is sometimes just a cigar and our universe is real and that's that. I hope that's the case. 

Proxima Centauri B: Our Future Home?

By John Michael Godier

Yesterday, scientists confirmed the existence of yet another exoplanet. But this one stands out and will quickly become the most important exoplanet yet found. The reason for that is simple; it's close by. In fact, it's practically as close as an exoplanet can get to the sun given that it orbits Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to our own at just 4.2 light years away. But that's not the most interesting thing, the planet also happens to be earth-sized and located within the habitability zone of its star. Not only do we have an exoplanet that is close and potentially habitable, it's close enough for us to eventually visit.

While not much is known yet about Proxima Centauri B, we do know a little. Proxima Centauri itself is a red dwarf star, rather dim and small and slightly older than our sun and about one seventh the size. That means its zone of habitability is very close to the star, and indeed Proxima B orbits at just .05 astronomical units out. Compare this to Mercury which orbits at .38 astronomical units from our sun. Even though Proxima B orbits very close to its star, given how dim the star is the planet receives only about 65% of the energy from its star that we get from the sun. Its distance from its star is within the zone where liquid water can exist. But that closeness also raises the likelihood that the planet is tidally locked, that is to say that one side of it is always in light and the other hemisphere is always in dark. That creates a special situation for potential life.

While by no means is this planet guaranteed be able to host life, there are many, many factors involved with that, if it did it would congregate at the terminator between the light and dark hemispheres rather than globally as it does on Earth. This zone may be very thin, or somewhat thicker if the atmosphere is right to distribute heat to the dark side. There's also an uncertainty about the conditions in which this system exists, we do not know for example if Proxima Centauri is part of a larger system that includes the nearby stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B.

If it is gravitationally bound to them and formed with them, then this affects the distribution of water within the system due to the fact that the larger stars would have driven comets into the Proxima system that would have enriched it with water. If Proxima is merely passing by, then this factor changes and Proxima B may have very little water at all and probably no life.

Also working against life is the amount of X-Ray radiation the planet receives, about 400 times more than what we have here on earth. Depending on the conditions on that world, that amount could make it impossible for life to gain a foothold, we simply don't have enough information to say.

One thing we do know however is that the planet's orbital eccentricity is low, which would allow for a more stable environment and perhaps even temperatures similar to those on earth within the areas that might be habitable.

So while we don't know much about this world yet, and cannot make any claims as to whether its earth-like and habitable or very different from earth and hostile to all forms of life, it does have certain features that make it extremely intriguing. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Proxima B is how close it is. While most exoplanets we find are hopelessly distant, this one is reachable with sufficient technology. It would take years to get there, there's no question of that, but it also took nearly a decade for the New Horizons probe to reach Pluto, so we humans are no strangers to long-term exploration missions.

Eventually, we'll send a probe when we gain the ability to travel at speeds approaching half the speed of light or more. There are already concepts out there on just how to do that. And possibly, just possibly, at some time in the far future humans may one day set foot on Proxima Centauri B.

Will A.I. obey the law? Or will they conclude that breaking the law is better?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1658091/robots-will-become-criminals-and-cops-wont-be-able-to-steer-them-away-from-the-d

KIC 8462852 Update as of 8/7/16

By John Michael Godier

This is a continuation of my coverage of the KIC 8462852 potential alien megastructure star story. For a more detailed look at the back story, check out my video of April 10th of this year for an in-depth report, link in the description below. For those looking for new information on what's been happening over the summer, let me start by saying that the plot has most definitely thickened.

For starters, while still unlikely, the alien megastructure theory has still not been discounted and no satisfying natural explanation has yet emerged. What has happened is new observations have been released that paint this star in an even stranger light than was the case just a few months ago.

At the beginning of the year, Dr. Bradley Schaefer determined from photographic plates at Harvard that KIC 8462852 had dimmed overall over the course of a century in addition to the bizarre periodic deep dips in brightness that were seen by Kepler. This fell into question when another group of scientists published a paper calling Schaefer's methodology into question and suggesting that there was no overall dimming trend which was then widely reported in the media. Unfortunately, the methodology of the people questioning Schaefer's methodology has also been called into question, and the whole thing is now somewhat of a mess.

But that brings us to the new findings which may render the whole argument moot.

A few days ago a paper was published by Benjamin Montet and Joshua Simon that details a study they conducted using the Kepler data and found some astonishing results. Potentially backing up Schaefer's findings, they found that KIC 8462852 did in fact exhibit an overall dimming trend over the time that Kepler observed it. But not only did it dim, it also changed the rate at which it dimmed. For about the first thousand days of the observation period, the star dimmed at a fairly constant rate for a cumulative total of about .9 percent. Then for the last 200 days the rate abruptly increased, and the star dimmed overall a further two percent. That's a lot of overall dimming in a very, very short amount of time.

One possibility mentioned in the paper is that a forming polar spot on the surface of the star could be responsible for the long term dimming. This has not been observed with this class of star before, but has been seen in stars of other classes. However, this would not account for the periodic large-scale dips in the star's brightness that caught everyone's attention in the first place. For this to be the reason behind the long-term dimming, it would have to be a completely separate phenomenon from whatever is causing the periodic deep dips. It seems hard to swallow that two completely different but equally strange phenomena would be happening to the same star.

The good news is that KIC 8462852 will get the study it deserves and the mystery will eventually be solved. Earlier this year, Dr. Tabitha Boyajian and her colleagues ran a successful kickstarter blitz to raise money to buy telescope time in order to study the star for a year. They were successful. In addition to that, multiple telescopes both amateur and professional are being pointed at the star ever since it emerged from behind the sun a few months ago. It will be interesting to see what they find, but what will be even more interesting when they get spectrum data on one of the periodic deep dimming events. That will tell us much and most importantly it will tell us if the star is being blocked by solid objects, or if it's being blocked by a more diffuse conglomeration of material. If it's a transparent cloud, then that would probably point to a natural explanation and go far in ruling out alien megastructures as a cause. If they turn out to be solid, then this story will get even more interesting very quickly. Be sure to stay tuned.

So there you have it, while the alien megastructure hypothesis remains standing, it will most likely be discounted and a natural explanation will eventually be found with more thorough study of the star. And even if it turns out not to be alien life, this will still be one of the most interesting and mysterious stellar objects we've ever found. Whatever this is, it's something we definitely haven't seen before. But I stress, alien megastructures remain highly unlikely as an explanation, it's merely one possibility. That said, it's always fun to speculate, and being a science fiction author I simply can't resist.

One of the most frequently asked questions regarding this story is why aliens would go through the trouble of creating such enormous structures in the first place. I wonder this myself, as I suspect that advanced alien species would probably not be detectable at all, see my video on nanotechnology for a discussion on that very subject, link in the description below. But there are several speculative answers to this question that I'd like to present.

The first reason would be power generation. This is the most basic assumption in the Dyson sphere concept, you build solar collecting arrays to harvest energy from your star. Eventually, if the engineering proved to be possible at all, there is some debate there, you could envelope your star entirely with a shell and harness 100% of its energy.

But that's not the only reason to build a megastructure. There are several others but the one I find most intriguing specific to Tabby's star is the concept of a stellar engine designed to physically move a star. The reason this is so interesting is because one aspect of this star that hasn't received much attention is that it has a companion star that we don't really know that much about.

Not far away there is a small red dwarf either orbiting it as a binary star system or the stars are separate systems passing by each other. In fact, the apparently discounted cold comet explanation relied on this star passing by and disrupting Tabby's Star's Oort cloud sending the comets careening towards it. But if you were a civilization that had a star passing dangerously close to your system, one way to avoid getting bombarded by comets would be to simply move your star. Are the aliens running from the red dwarf or are they native to it and pushing Tabby's star out of the way? I can't say, but I can say that neither is likely because it's still overwhelmingly probable that we're observing a natural phenomenon that we don't yet understand. It's just a very weird one.

Did Aliens Try to Call and We Missed It? The Wow! Signal and the Mystery of TYC 1220-91-1  

By John Michael Godier

It might be safe to say that the holy grail of questions we humans can ask about the universe is 'are we alone?'. So far, the answer, as far as we know, is yes. Seemingly backing this up, we have the Fermi paradox which states that if alien life exists, why don't we see evidence of it? Good question. On the other hand, we have the odds, which are overwhelmingly against us being alone given the sheer amount of stars, planets and galaxies present in the universe. But if there is life elsewhere in the universe, how much of it is intelligent? And if there is intelligent life, have we ever seen any indication of it? The answer is potentially yes, we very well may have. And I say that with science in mind rather than wishful thinking. But we shouldn't go overboard either.

One of the great mysteries of space science was the infamous Wow! signal of August 15, 1977. On that day, the Big Ear radio telescope, a project of Ohio State University from the early days of the SETI programs, detected a signal located in the constellation Sagittarius that looked very artificial, as in so artificial that it remains the best candidate we've ever seen for an alien radio transmission. So much so that the discoverer of the signal, Dr. Jerry Ehman, warns that while we should be careful not to draw vast conclusions from half-vast data, an alien origin remains the best technical explanation for the Wow! signal.

The reason it was such a good candidate is that the signal appeared consistent with what scientist's expected an alien signal to look like. As it turns out, we can narrow down just how an alien civilization wishing to communicate would do it. The electromagnetic spectrum is very noisy. If you go too low in the spectrum, you run into a lot of noise from astronomical objects and if you go too high in the spectrum you run into something called quantum noise which renders those frequencies useless. Only between 1 and 10 gigahertz do we have a window where the spectrum is clear and useful. This applies to us, but also to the aliens. The laws of nature are the same everywhere.

But there's more. Planetary atmospheres block out different areas of the spectrum through reflection and absorption. Earth's atmosphere has two areas in the spectrum where it's transparent. Visible light, which is why we evolved eyes to see, and coincidentally that 1 to 10 gigahertz gap. So if you want to signal someone, you need to make sure it makes it through a planet's atmosphere and you need to make sure it's on a frequency where someone might be listening. Luckily, there are several magic frequencies where an intelligence might look.

One of these is known as the hydrogen line or watering hole as it's informally known. It is located at a frequency of 1.42 GHz, the frequency at which hydrogen emits radio waves. The sound of hydrogen is everywhere in the universe, you hear it on that frequency anywhere you point your radio telescope and that makes the frequency noteworthy. So it stands to reason that if you're going to pick a frequency to get someone's attention, go with the one that stands out. The Wow! signal was also very narrow, smack in the middle of the watering hole, and did not appear to be a signal from earth bouncing back off an asteroid. In other words, it had all the hallmarks of an artificial alien signal and no suggested natural explanation has stood up. But there's a problem. The signal never repeated.

Multiple attempts to pick the signal up again over the years have all been unsuccessful. Further, when you look at the narrowband signal itself to see what the nature of it was, it was found to contain no data. If you will, it was just a blank signal that we detected for 72 seconds, though it may have lasted longer due to the fact that the telescope was scanning past it and was not stationary.

What could the Wow! signal have been? That remains unclear, but being me, I can't resist speculating.

One possibility is a beacon of some sort that functions like a lighthouse sweeping its beam across space at an unknown rate. This might be useful for an alien species for scientific or navigational purposes rather than as a means of contacting other species. Unfortunately, without knowing the period of such a beacon, which could well be centuries, we don't know when to look for the signal when it passes by again. Since radio telescope time is expensive and in high demand, it seems unlikely that we'll see it again for the foreseeable future.

Another possibility is radar. Humans on earth have used radio telescopes like Arecibo to emit radio waves to detect near earth asteroids. These signals are directional and do not repeat, so if aliens are listening in our direction, they would see a signal similar to the Wow! signal, only much weaker and on a different frequency if they caught us while we were detecting asteroids. It's entirely possible that the Wow! signal might have been aliens mapping the asteroids in their solar system, though it would seem silly to do that at the hydrogen line.

But the Wow! signal is not the only candidate for a bona fide alien radio signal. While the media seems willing to label every weird signal from space as potentially alien, the fact is the vast majority turn out to have natural origins. But one other signal that stands out was captured and described in a 2010 research paper and did not get much media attention. Unlike the Wow! signal, which had no obvious source, this signal originated from the vicinity of a star named TYC 1220-91-1. Like the Wow! signal broadcasting at the hydrogen line, this signal too was in a very special area of the spectrum, 4462.3 Mhz.

This frequency is arrived at by multiplying Pi by the hydrogen line, again a magic frequency that an intelligent species might locate a signal in if they wanted to say hello in a way that doesn't seem natural, but also wouldn't mess their own radio astronomers up by broadcasting on the hydrogen line. More, the star itself is interesting. It's similar to our own sun, just a little older and could have habitable planets around it. Unlike the Wow! signal, this one was caught and tracked in realtime and lasted ten seconds and showed all the characteristics of what is expected from an interstellar beacon. It was also a very strong signal, a factor of ten times the strength of the Wow! signal. But, like the Wow! signal, it did not repeat and unfortunately there does not seem to be much active monitoring of this star.

While it's impossible to read the mind of an alien race, we are in fact a technological intelligent species ourselves and there are certain things we do that aliens might detect. One of the misconceptions regarding us though is that our transmissions would be visible to an alien civilization. This idea was famously put forward in the movie 'Contact' when an advanced alien race detected a broadcast of Adolph Hitler opening the 1936 Olympics and broadcasted it back to us. But this is in reality highly unlikely. Our radio and television transmissions are weak, typically far less than 100,000 watts. If we took our current equipment to the nearest star system and pointed it towards earth, we wouldn't be able to detect ourselves in most radio frequencies. There are exceptions however, such as our radar that can travel much more distantly and powerful signals we've sent out from Arecibo intentionally sending messages to alien races. The problem is, we didn't repeat the signals. Why? Not enough money and telescope time. We may well be someone else's Wow! signal.

So that begs a question, if we're not willing to pay for a full-time beacon to get the attention of aliens, then why would they? This has led to an interesting proposition put forth by physicists Gregory and James Benford. The twin brother scientists have suggested that aliens might repeat their signal periodically to save energy rather than  maintain a constant beacon. This is especially important in light that for an alien species to know to transmit something to earth directionally, they would need to be within a hundred or so light years to have detected our transmissions.

But if a species had not detected us directly, they may have known something interesting was going on here long ago when they noticed the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere. Oxygen is weird stuff, and highly reactive, so if it's in an atmosphere and being replenished, then it needs a source. Life is a very strong source. They might conclude that life is the most likely cause, and might take a chance and send a signal just in case someone intelligent was here. But they might not be willing to spend too much energy on it, just like us. After all, a planet full of dinosaurs is not going to respond. For all they know, intelligence might not have evolved here yet. But it still might be worth a shot to send a repeating signal towards a habitable planet with liquid water.

So how do you know when to look for the signal returning? To find a Benford beacon, you simply need to know the period at which it transmits. If the Wow! signal or TYC 1220-91-1 are Benford beacons, it has been suggested that we should check these targets with the thinking that the aliens may repeat the signal at intervals tied to pi or some other universal value coordinated along with some periodic object, such as a nearby pulsar or variable star. Or maybe some other basic periodic fundamental from science or mathematics to see if they've given us a clue as to when the signal will return.

So was the Wow! signal and others E.T.'s attempt at saying hello or mapping asteroids? Possibly. Will we ever know for sure? That unfortunately seems highly unlikely as far as the past signals are concerned due to lack of resources to watch them long-term. Personally, I think that if we find E.T. it will be in some unexpected way. Perhaps some astronomer studying stellar chemical composition will see something unnatural in a star's spectrum, such as plutonium, that points to alien influence on a star's composition. Or perhaps it will be in the spectrum of one of the exoplanets, maybe we will see their oxygen. In any case, whether we find out if we are truly alone or the universe is teeming with life, I hope it happens sooner rather than later. It's the one thing I'd really like to see before my time on this world comes to an end.