Some things you can see directly, like your fingers. Other things, like your chin, you need a mirror or a camera to see.

Few scientific ideas have leapt from philosophy seminars to dinner-table debates as quickly as the claim that our universe might be an artificial construct. The simulation hypothesis promises a ...

The simulation hypothesis is an impressive logical and philosophical argument that has challenged our fundamental notions of reality.

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...