The physical world as a virtual reality: a prima facie case
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Date
2007
DOI
Open Access Location
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Publisher
Massey University
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Abstract
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.
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Keywords
Virtual reality, Digital physics, Information theoretics
Citation
Whitworth, B. (2007), The physical world as a virtual reality: a prima facie case, Research Letters in the Information and Mathematical Sciences, 11, 44-60