Physicists have spent decades arguing over whether our universe is a fundamental reality or a kind of cosmic software, and ...

Gravity used to be the most down-to-earth of ideas, the thing that kept apples falling and planets in line. Now a growing ...

Monisha Ravisetti was a science writer at CNET. She covered climate change, space rockets, mathematical puzzles, dinosaur bones, black holes, supernovas, and sometimes, the drama of philosophical ...

The simulation hypothesis—the idea that our universe might be an artificial construct running on some advanced alien computer ...

The simulated universe theory implies that our universe, with all its galaxies, planets and life forms, is a meticulously programmed computer simulation. In this scenario, the physical laws governing ...

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 ...

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 ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of "Ask ...

A military planner at the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, watches a battle unfold without taking his eyes off the computer screen. The software is tracking a million vehicles spread over ...

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 ...

Just Elon Musk's name is enough to evoke an emotional response in many people, ranging from hope and glee in some to anger and disgust in others. But how about existential dread? It's true that one of ...

In 1952, at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, theoretical physicists Enrico Fermi, John Pasta and Stanislaw Ulam brainstormed ways to use the MANIAC, one of the world’s first supercomputers, to solve ...