A simulation is a representation of something else, as a model of the Eiffel Tower is, and an information simulation is one based on information. For example, our computers can simulate the weather to predict it, and flight simulators let pilots experience a plane before they fly it, so an information simulation represents something physical but is itself just information. 

The simulation hypothesis, that our world is a simulation created by a physical computer in another  world, was portrayed in the film The Matrix, where Morpheus says:

“What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

The hero Neo then discovers that his reality is actually a simulation of New York in 1999, fed into his brain as electrical signals, by machines in the future that are using him as a battery, but is that possible? Can physical machines simulate the world we see?

The classical processing needed to simulate a system increases exponentially with the particles in it because they interact, so our computers can only calculate the behavior of a few photons (Eck, 2017). To simulate even a few hundred electrons requires more atoms than exist in our universe (Kendra, 2017), let alone simulating New York city. These calculations aren’t just implausible but logically impossible (Faizal et al., 2025), so physics concludes that we aren’t living in a computer simulation.

Undeterred, simulation theory advocates note that simulations are fake, so that logic fails. For example, why simulate the billions of years of history before humans, or galaxies and stars we can’t visit, or quantum events we can’t see? Instead, just show a far-off galaxy as a dot of light that appears real, as movies do, so simulation theory predicts holes or cracks in our reality.

The big computer of simulation theory (Campbell, 2003) can’t calculate quantum events, so quantum theory must be flawed (Campbell, Owhadi, Sauvageau, & Watkinson, 2017), but critics have failed to falsify it for over a century now, so this is unlikely to succeed. And even if it did, finding a flaw in quantum theory would just result in its revision, not simulation theory support.

Current physics finds simulation theory impossible, so machines, aliens, or our future-selves aren’t simulating our world from another, but this isn’t the only version of virtualism. Annex 1 reviews the various ways a virtual reality can be generated, and concludes that a world like ours can’t arise from a physical base. This excludes not only physical virtualism (the Matrix option), but also information virtualism (Wheeler’s It from Bit), and even mind virtualism (Kastrup, 2019), so  nothing that derives from physical events can generate a world like ours.

This still leaves quantum virtualism, that quantum events cause physical events, because unlike classical processing, quantum processing increases exponentially with size. It scales up as particle interactions do, so a quantum network the size of our universe can generate it. Processing costs aren’t an issue if every point of space is a processor, so every moment of the past fourteen billion years happened, every far-away galaxy in our telescopes exists, and quantum events actually happen. However hard we look, in the past, far away, or microscopically, there are no cracks or rifts in our world.

Quantum reality can generate physical reality because it isn’t limited by physical laws, so if our world is virtual, it isn’t a copy of what causes it. It isn’t then a simulation, but if it isn’t simulating something, why does it exist? Our universe is on a scale we can barely imagine, so it doesn’t just exist for us, and we don’t need to know what it is doing, any more than all the animals that have lived and died needed to know that they were part of an evolution. Yet they were, so we are here to wonder why evolution produced us?

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Why something exists rather than nothing is a fundamental question of metaphysics because it doesn’t assume anything about matter, God, or the laws of physics. Russell’s answer, in a radio debate in 1948, was that the existence of our universe is just a brute fact:

“I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.” (see Copleston vs. Russell).

In his view, the universe just is and that’s it, so science at the time assumed it always was, until the evidence showed that it actually began about fourteen billion years ago, in a big bang. This re-raised the question of why it exists, because while what always was can be a brute fact, what began needs a cause, as nothing can come from nothing. 

Science now accepts that at some point in the past, an enormous amount of energy was injected into a small space, that not only expanded into our universe but also created our space and time. It was as if a switch clicked and a world began, leading to the idea popularized by the Matrix movie, that our reality is a simulation.

QR5.7.1. The Simulation Hypothesis

QR5.7.2. Why Evolution?

QR5.7.3. Why Virtual?

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Armageddon, the biblical end of days, describes how our world ends but in physics, how the universe will end depends on how space is curved overall. Relativity lets space curve but doesn’t specify how. A positively curved space will eventually stop expanding and contract in a big crunch, but a negatively curved space will expand faster and faster because its mass can’t stop it, ending in a big freeze. The latter was expected until cosmology found that space is expanding faster not slower, so space is negatively curved (Cowen, 2013).

This model describes our space as the inner surface of an expanding hyper-bubble (2.4.1), so it expects the negative curvature that was found, but that doesn’t mean it will expand forever. If our universe is just a bubble in a quantum bulk, there are probably others, so what happens when one pocket universe, as Guth calls them, meets another?

The result depends on whether they are made of matter or antimatter. If one matter universe meets another, they just merge into a bigger bubble, so if our universe has already done this, it will be bigger than its expansion allows. The alternative, that our universe meets an antimatter universe, is the Armageddon option.

When matter meets antimatter, they essentially destroy each other, so if a matter universe met an anti-matter universe, both would be destroyed to some degree. Antimatter is rare in our universe but is produced in tiny amounts by cosmic rays in thunderstorms. It soon vanishes when it meets matter, taking some of it with it, so if our bubble universe met its antimatter equal, both could annihilate back into the quantum bulk from whence they came.

This Armageddon would spread at light speed, but it could take a while, as our galaxy is an estimated 100,000 light years across, and the observable universe is 90 billion light years across. Even so, could our telescopes see it coming? Unfortunately no, as we see galaxies as they were millions of years ago. Our earth would just be there one moment and gone the next, so when our piece of the universal game is packed away, it will be at the speed of light, with no possible warning.

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The thermodynamic law of devolution was based on steam engines that don’t evolve as our universe does, but the same quantum law that drives this law also enables evolution, as exploring every option finds new combinations that survive. For example, when electrons discover stable orbits around protons in atoms, order increases. A lead atom is 82 protons, 125 neutrons, and 82 electrons in a highly ordered state with a half-life of millions of years, so it is essentially a permanent increase in order.

A cool fridge on a hot day needs a power supply to stay cold, but lead atoms don’t need energy to stay ordered, just an unlikely sequence of past events, and eggs are the same. Matter evolves by finding unlikely combinations that survive, not by maintaining a heat imbalance. For example, that extreme light collided head-on (4.3.1) is by any standard a very unlikely event, but the resulting electron is stable. Order increased when light entangled into an electron, but no energy maintains it, so the evolution of matter increases order without an ongoing energy cost.

This doesn’t contradict the second law, that energy is needed to create order, because the search for stable combinations needs energy. Evolution lets atoms form ordered molecules like water, then super-molecules like RNA that copy themselves, leading to the cells that made us. The biological evolution of life then just followed on from the physical evolution of matter, as a natural extension.

If the quantum flux that underlies the second law of thermodynamics also underpins evolution, one can’t exist without the other. Evolution needs constant change to discover new possibilities, but that same change inevitably causes decay, so order is possible for the same reason that disorder is probable. Evolution increases order by finding possible states and devolution increases disorder by finding probable states, but both have the same quantum origin.

Current physics sees that everything is falling apart, but not that it is also coming together, as the evolution of matter in stars and supernovas is an anti-entropy process that we can’t replicate. If only life evolved, the second law might reign supreme, but matter also does, so evolution is as universal as devolution. Evolution was built into our universe at its inception, just as heat flows were, and can explain what the second law can’t, that life exists because order evolved. Yet for a universe to possibly evolve it must also probably decay, so devolution is the shadow of evolution, just as neutrinos are like shadow electrons.

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Entropy always increases, and its opposite is an unlikely state like an egg, so why is order all around us? For example, day follows night, seasons cycle, plants produce food to eat, and air to breathe, in a synergistic, self-regulating system that some call Gaiea. Is life on earth then just a local anomaly that bucks the universal trend?

A fridge that keeps beer cold on a hot day is an anomaly, but it doesn’t deny the second law because it uses electrical energy, so is the earth the same? It has the sun to power it, but earth isn’t the only planet that orbits a star, they all do, so it may be lucky but it isn’t an anomaly. It also needs order above it, as the sun has to keep its planets in order for the earth to evolve life, and that requires the galaxy to keep its stars in order, so if life depends on a cosmic order, it isn’t an anomaly.

The other possibility that physics allows is that the big bang was highly ordered, so life can still occur because the universe is only half-way through its devolution:

“The ultimate source of order, of low entropy, must be the big bang itself. … The egg splatters rather than unsplatters because it is … the drive toward higher entropy … initiated by the extraordinarily low entropy state with which the universe began.” (Greene, 2004), p173-174.

In this reverse logic, our universe had to begin very ordered because the second law rules, but that the initial chaos was highly ordered makes no sense at all. How is the white-hot plasma that came before atoms and molecules formed, let alone stars, highly ordered? If there was a prize for backward thinking (Note 1), this would surely be a top contender.

How then did ordered life begin? Our earth is over four billion years old, but for most of that time it hosted only single-cell organisms like bacteria. Then about two billion years ago, as continents formed and volcanoes erupted, these bacteria caused the great oxidation event that produced an atmosphere suitable for higher life. Even so, another billion years passed before somehow, somewhere, a very unlikely event occurred. Two primal cells with quite different origins, archaea and bacteria, merged into one complex cell, that led to plants, animals, and us (Lane, 2015). Then half a billion years ago, modern life began, leading to human beings about three million years ago, which is the blink of eye in the earth’s timeline. The chances of life arising on earth are a trillion to one, so to call it a devolution based on a heat engine law is ridiculous.

Bacteria are still here because they know how to survive. Bacteria in boxes outside the International Space Station for a year revived when back on earth because under harsh conditions, they can form spores that are dead metabolically but recover when conditions are right, even after years, so they could hitch a ride on a meteor to travel between planets. The panspermia hypothesis, that life on one planet can spread to another, means bacteria from mars could have colonized earth.

Whether this happened or not we don’t know, but bacteria exist on earth, so of the mind-boggling 160 billion planets in our galaxy, many others probably host them too. If so, a galaxy full of life isn’t what the second law predicts after 14 billion years of decay! Life arose on earth by a highly improbable sequence of events that defied seemingly impossible odds, so what caused it?

Note 1. Backward thinking explains an already known answer by tweaking it to fit the facts, or the facts to fit it, so it produces no new knowledge. In contrast, forward thinking begins with a question and lets the evidence provide an answer, so it does produce new knowledge. Science is based on forward thinking not backward thinking (see Research Roadmap).

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The second law of thermodynamics explains what the first law can’t, that what is in theory reversible, in practice isn’t. For example, running a video of the earth orbiting the sun looks much the same, but playing a video of an egg breaking in reverse evokes laughter. Yet by the first law, the events of egg breaking are just as reversible as the earth’s orbit, so why doesn’t it happen? The second law answer is that order never increases in a closed system, so eggs don’t unbreak (Figure 5.17).

Entropy is how physics describes disorder or randomness, and Boltzmann defined it as the number of possible microscopic states that can produce a macroscopic state. By this definition, when a colored gas injected into an empty bottle spreads, entropy increases. The gas molecules begin concentrated at a point (Figure 5.18), which only a few molecule combinations allow, so entropy is low. Then they disperse into a spread-out state that more molecule combinations allow, so entropy increases. In general, entropy always increases or stays constant because disorder is more probable than order.

A gas injected into a bottle will probably spread over time, but its molecules could by chance all move back to a point. This is unlikely but possible, so the second law is a statistical law not a causal law. Objects don’t have to become more disordered, but in a constantly changing world, they probably will. Disorder then increases for the same reason that constantly shaking a bottle disperses its contents.

Heraclitus compared our reality to a river that is never the same from one moment to the next because it always changes. This Heraclitean flux can be attributed to the quantum law of all action (3.6.3), that anything possible eventually happens as quantum events explore every option. Our world is then an ocean of change because the quantum world is the same. If the second law of physics is based on the first law of quantum theory, it is universal, but how then does order arise?

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Science deduced that energy isn’t created or destroyed because it was seen to take other forms. For example, when road friction slows down a car, its tires become hot and radiate heat, so kinetic energy becomes heat energy, and steam engines convert heat energy into kinetic energy. Energy is then observed to take different forms, but with one notable exception.

Lifting an object takes energy that dropping it releases, but where does it go to or come from? There is no heat flow, so it is said to have potential energy based on its position in a gravitational field. This balances the energy books to conserve energy, but where is potential energy stored?

For example, if a rocket blasts off into an earth orbit, where did the liftoff energy go? And if it floats off into space forever, where did that energy go? Or if it crashes on Jupiter, to release more energy than it took to leave earth, where did the extra energy come from? The current answer, that gravity gives and takes potential energy, lets energy be conserved when actually, it isn’t. 

In this model, energy is the rate at which processing is transferred, so light has radiant energy because it transfers processing, and high frequencies that do that at a faster rate have more energy. Radiant energy is conserved because photons always restart, as processing can.  

But what about kinetic energy? When light shining on a solar sail makes it move, radiant energy is converted into kinetic energy. The sail absorbs photons that bias its distribution, so it moves their way. Kinetic energy then is also based on photons, and it is conserved when objects collide because the photons exchanged are constant. And nuclear energy is also based on photons if matter is condensed light. Physical events restart photons in various forms, as light or matter, but photons are conserved because they can always restart.

However potential energy is different. It is currently attributed gravity, which as Einstein concluded, isn’t a force at all, and so can’t create energy. Potential energy then isn’t a form of energy at all, but a virtual energy that justifies our equations, just as virtual particles are.

Current physics has many conservation laws, of matter, charge, momentum, isospin, and quark flavor, but all are partial, as nuclear reactions don’t conserve matter, and weak interactions don’t conserve flavor. The conservation of energy is also partial, because the expansion of space doesn’t conserve it, and it needs a virtual (potential) energy to work. Yet photons are always conserved, as when a rocket leaves earth, they aren’t lost, and if it crashes on Jupiter, they aren’t created.  

When our universe began as a little rip in the quantum fabric (2.4.2), the event that physics calls inflation created space and light, until space expanded to heal the rip. Since then, the number of photons that exist hasn’t changed because light is immortal, and space expanding doesn’t change that. Our universe conserves light not energy, so the first law of thermodynamics isn’t universal but the conservation of light is. Is the second law then also limited rather than universal?

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Thermodynamics began as the study of heat machines like steam engines to increase their efficiency. The observation that the total energy of the machine remained constant gave the first law of thermodynamics, that energy is always conserved, and that energy always flows from hot to cold gave the second law, that energy always disperses. It followed that if our universe is a big machine, it will have a constant energy that constantly disperses.

The second law predicts that the energy of the universe will always disperse, to end up as maybe one atom per cubic light year, in a big freeze that will last forever, because:

“… eventually all these over densities will be ironed out and the Universe will be left featureless and lifeless forever, it seems” (Barrow, 2007), p191.

According to big bang theory, our universe was once just the size of a tennis ball that then expanded into what it is today. But expansion requires energy, as blowing up a balloon cools the gas inside it, so our universe must be cooling down. This cooling effect is illustrated by cosmic microwave background, the early light that was once white hot but is now freezing cold. And space is still expanding, so every photon in our universe has a longer wavelength today than it did yesterday, so it has less energy. The expansion of space is constantly taking the energy of light and not giving it back, so the total energy of our universe isn’t conserved!

This doesn’t deny the law of conservation of energy, as it doesn’t apply if our universe isn’t a closed system, but it does mean that our universe is cooling down as it expands. The energy of our universe isn’t conserved, but what then is?

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Physics predicts that disorder always increases because a heat-engine law requires it, so our universe should be pretty chaotic by now, but as Strogatz points out:

“Scientists have often been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe. The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings—that have all somehow managed to assemble themselves.” (Strogatz, 2003).

If disorder always increases, how did billions of years of randomization produce the present order? If you woke up in a warm bed with an electric blanket, would you believe that humanity has been devolving since we lived in caves? It doesn’t make sense, so either the prediction is wrong or some other principle is opposing it.

QR5.6.1. Is Energy Conserved?

QR5.6.2. What Is Conserved?

QR5.6.3. Disorder is Probable

QR5.6.4. Order is Possible

QR5.6.5. Evolution Creates Order

QR5.6.6. Armageddon

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The unification of gravity, electricity, and magnetism has long been a dream of physics, but while virtual photons unified electricity and magnetism, virtual gravitons couldn’t explain gravity. Then, as the standard model invented particles to explain forces, the dream was lost, because one field couldn’t generate all its particles. 

But if the strong, weak, and Higgs fields are unnecessary inventions (4.5.3), the dream of a unified field theory re-emerges, as the fields to unify are again just gravity and electro-magnetism. This unification could be called the gravito-electro-magnetic field, but the quantum field is simpler.

What then is the quantum field? In simple terms, it is the quantum values that explain light and matter in quantum theory. Schrödinger’s equation describes how these values spread, but not why they collapse to a point in a physical event, but processing can overload a network and restart at a point. Matter is then a repeating overload that always restarts (4.5.8), with these properties:

1. Mass. The net process value from +1 to -1 in one or more dimensions.

2. Charge. The net process remainder from +1 to -1 in one or more dimensions.

3. Spin. The process spin direction, which can be up or down for an axis.

Matter spreads these properties around itself, like ripples in a bucket (Figure 5.15), as a distribution that alters the quantum field to cause gravity. Gravity then acts invisibly at a distance, like magic, but it is no illusion or trick, just quantum vibrations acting lawfully. Those who can’t imagine this call quantum waves imaginary, but why then does Schrödinger’s equation constrain their imaginations? 

The quantum field also sets the above values throughout space to generate the physical world we see. For example, if its values are null, we see empty space, but if they are mass +1, charge -1, and spin ±1, we see an electron, and so on.  

In Figure 5.16, the mass, charge, and magnetism of matter spread into the quantum field around it. Mass strengthens the field nearby to cause a gravity field, charges alter the field between them to cause an electrical field, and magnets alter the field between them to cause a magnetic field. 

The effect in all cases is that matter moves when the quantum field around it is stronger or faster one way, as even a small bias can give movement in our time. 

Matter doesn’t just sit there, but spreads its mass, charge, and spin into the space around it to cause the fields of gravity, electricity, and magnetism. These fields then all arise from one quantum field with three aspects, namely net strength (mass), net remainder (charge), and spin direction (magnetism), and the same quantum activity can also explain the other fields of physics (4.5.8).

The alternative view, that the quantum field is imaginary, leads to the many fields and particles of the standard model, so there can be field unification or particles, but not both. Quantum realism only needs one quantum field to explain all the forces of physics. The next section explores how the same field creates order as well as disorder.

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