"A recent scientific study undertaken by the University of Bonn in Germany suggests that the universe could be one giant computer simulation."

http://youtu.be/6l2YQCFE0N4

Please don't fight about this topic. I just thought it would be a cool and interesting thing to discuss. Personally I believe in God and it's kind of weird to think of reality as we know it as a simulation. Share your thoughts and opinions to this article and please be respectful of peoples faiths or lack of faith. We all deserve our opinions on this sensitive topic.

Opinions? on the internet? you're very craz-- brave. u_u

Well, I guess I got my boxing gloves and armored thong on for nothing.

But in all seriousness, I was just thinking the other day that perhaps, just perhaps, we're making computer simulations more like the universe? Crazy concept, I know. <_<

/me removes his booby armor.

What if our universe is a simulation within a universe that also is a simulation?

I am a video game! Where's my extra lives?

/me eyes the turtle and takes her claws out,
_{it was said to not fight about the topic... and I don't plan too >:]}

I think that maybe you have been watching to much Matrix.

Why is the video being narrated by Ned Stark? _{Simulated winter is coming}

On a serious note. Whatever the universe is made of at its very fibers, and whatever's beyond the edges of the universe, it seems unlikely (and in a way, a rather vain suggestion) that it is essentially just a super-giant version of technology humans have already invented, albeit quadrillions of times more powerful - we're suggesting that all the rules we've put into computers are the same rules that govern the universe. That would be a frankly staggering coincidence.

My personal thoughts (of little to no scientific basis - a theory similar to this may well already exist but I've never bothered to look) is that the universe is like a bubble in a cluster of bubbles. A little science tidbit first - the Big Bang wasn't actually an explosion, but rather a rapid expansion like a bubble (the Big Bang term was coined by a skeptic who wanted to make it sound ridiculous - but it ended up catching on instead). Perhaps every explosion could theoretically become a universe - from a star going supernova, to the spark made by a cigarette lighter. Now I know, that would be mad. Entirely mad, and I agree. Universes would be popping up everywhere and making the evening news a rather livelier affair (especially since the simple act of turning on your TV could well engulf your street in a newborn cosmos).

So I argue that these don't become universes because (amongst other reasons) they lack the mass and the gravity. We can agree that our universe started as a singularity - an enormous mass in an infinitely small amount of space. Had their not been enough mass, then the singularity would have simply exploded, flinging its contents out way past the current size of our universe in an instant, and our universe would have never existed.

But because of the mass, and because of the huge forces of gravity, we instead get a rapid expansion - it sort of explodes but its slowed significantly by its gravity dragging it back. The slowed growth gives the cosmic shrapnel time to gather together, create galaxies, planets and so on. But the thing is, if a single mass within the universe becomes large enough to do the same thing (the contents of a supermassive black hole, perhaps), then maybe that too could undergo rapid expansion rather than just exploding everywhere. So universes within, or alongside, universes become possible. Perhaps not in our own universe, it's still quite young. But in one that's been around for a lot longer, is much larger and has much larger structures could well be capable of achieving that. The collapse of a universe (one theory for how the universe will end - once finished expanding outwards, it will collapse under its own gravity) in of itself would likely produce the conditions for rapid expansion too.

_{tl;dr there's no tl;dr. Try reading all that in Freudian though, it's considerably more entertaining.}

Okay, because I'm bored I will humor this idea for a moment. Let's say the universe IS somehow a massive computer simulation. How would one ever prove that from within the simulation? And say they somehow COULD come to that conclusion... What then? What would that really change? At most, it would reinforce the meaninglessness of life (not that I feel it is necessarily meaningless but that's a whole different topic). Why would someone WANT to know life isn't real? Could there be a more depressing discovery? It's not like the discovery would change anything, and blissful ignorance is probably better in this case. Besides, life is just as real to us. Our actions still have consequences in this universe, and our experiences are still important to ourselves. Of course, in the end, I doubt life's nature happened to have been figured out by a movie, let alone that any experiments could prove such a thing.

Would that mean we were created by a bunch of computer geeks

Maybe if you use your

This is what happens when scientists get on the really, really, good "product."

If it is, then what's the "real world"?

Judging by how much work they put into a complex universe simulation, it must be incredibly boring.