A University of Portsmouth physicist has investigated whether a new law of physics could support the oft-discussed theory that we are just characters in an advanced virtual world.
The simulated universe hypothesis suggests that what humans experience is actually an artificial reality, similar to a computer simulation, in which they themselves are constructs.
The theory is popular among several famous figures, including Elon Musk, and in the field of science known as information physics, which suggests that physical reality is mostly made up of bits of information.
Dr. Melvin Wopson previously published research that suggests that information has mass and that all elementary particles (the smallest known building blocks of the universe) store information about themselves, much like we have human DNA.
In 2022, he discovered a new law of physics that can predict genetic mutations in organisms, including viruses, and help judge their possible consequences.
It is based on the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy (a measure of disorder in an isolated system) can only increase or remain the same.
Dr. Wopson expected that entropy in information systems would also increase over time, but when he studied the evolution of these systems, he realized that it either remained constant or decreased. It was then that he established the second law of information dynamics, or infodynamics, which could significantly influence genetic research and the theory of evolution.
A new paper published in AIP Advances examines the scientific implications of the new law for other physical systems and environments, including biology, atomic physics, and cosmology.
Dr Wopson, from the university’s School of Mathematics and Physics, said in a statement: “I knew then that this discovery had far-reaching implications for several scientific disciplines. What I wanted to do next was to test the law and “see if I could further support the modeling hypothesis by moving it out of the realm of philosophy and into mainstream science.”
Key results include:
– Biological systems: The second law of infodynamics challenges the conventional understanding of genetic mutations by suggesting that they follow a pattern governed by information entropy. This discovery has major implications for fields such as genetic research, evolutionary biology, gene therapy, pharmacology, virology, and pandemic monitoring.
– Atomic physics: the article explains the behavior of electrons in multielectron atoms and provides information on phenomena such as Hund’s rule; which states that the term with the highest multiplicity has the lowest energy. Electrons are organized in a way that minimizes their information entropy, which sheds light on atomic physics and the stability of chemicals.
– Cosmology: The second law of infodynamics is shown to be a cosmological necessity, and thermodynamic considerations applied to an adiabatically expanding universe confirm its validity.
“The paper also provides an explanation for the prevalence of symmetry in the universe,” explained Dr. Wopson. “The principles of symmetry play an important role in relation to the laws of nature, but until now there has been little explanation as to why this might be so. My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest state of information entropy, potentially explaining nature’s propensity for it.
“This approach, in which redundant information is removed, resembles the process in which a computer removes or compresses unnecessary code to save storage space and optimize power consumption. And as a result, he supports the idea that “we live in a simulation.”
Dr. Wopson’s previous research shows that information is a fundamental component of the universe and has physical mass. He even claims that information may be the elusive dark matter that makes up nearly a third of the universe, which he calls the mass-energy-information equivalence principle.
The paper argues that the second law of infodynamics supports this principle, potentially supporting the idea that information is a physical entity equivalent to mass and energy.
“Next steps to complete these studies require empirical testing,” added Dr. Wopson. “One possible way would be an experiment I designed last year to confirm a fifth state of matter in the universe (and change physics as we know it) using collisions between particles and antiparticles,” he says.
