Are you locked inside a supercomputer? Are you Neo from 'The Matrix'?
Wake up.
An Italian physicist, Franco Vazza, used a paper to shatter the advanced delusion of 'we live in a simulated universe' that exists in the sci-fi community. He is not just nitpicking; he is seriously stamping this fantasy with the official label of 'physically impossible.'
In simple terms, he is telling you: stop fantasizing that you are an awakened one in cyberspace; reality is reality, so don't try to escape.
What is the simulation universe?
This 'simulation universe hypothesis' is actually quite popular, especially in Silicon Valley and philosophical circles. I've also mentioned it in my previous articles.
The general idea is: our current world is actually a 'fake universe' simulated by our descendants or advanced civilizations using supercomputers. We eat, sleep, dream, and even every second you spend reading this article is actually code in a simulator.
Doesn't it sound like a mix of 'The Matrix,' 'Inception,' and even the Metaverse?
But Wazza said that, from a physical perspective, this thing doesn't even qualify as a decent theory; it can only be regarded as a self-entertaining pseudo-proposition.
Why is it impossible? Because... there is not enough energy!
Wazza's core argument is surprisingly simple: the idea of a simulated universe is fundamentally uncomputable - because it consumes too much energy, and there is simply not enough energy to run this 'program.'
He started from a basic point: information has a cost. You cannot store or delete it just because you want to. Each bit's creation and elimination require energy.
The key point is that 'deleting information' consumes even more energy than 'creating information.' For example, a simple 'AND operation': 1 and 0 yield 0, and 0 and 0 also yield 0. But can you know what the original data was? No. The original information disappears, which is called an 'increase in information entropy.'
The laws of physics tell us that entropy (which is the degree of chaos) can never decrease; it can only be maintained or increased.
In other words: every time you process information, the world becomes a little more 'chaotic.' And simulating a universe requires continuously processing, storing, and clearing endless information. Every second is desperately consuming energy.
So Wazza asked a soul-searching question:
How much energy does it take to simulate the entire universe?
The answer is: more energy than the entire universe.
Black holes, holographic principle, cosmic limits
Wazza wasn't just talking; he brought out the killer argument - black holes.
There is an unheard of but real thing in the physics world: the 'information capacity' of black holes is not proportional to their volume but to their surface area. This is called 'Bekenstein entropy.'
What does it mean?
Under normal circumstances, you think information exists in a box; the bigger the box, the more information it can hold, right? But black holes don't work like that. Black holes are like flat USB drives, with their information only existing on the surface; being fatter doesn't mean they can hold more.
Thus, scientists put forward the 'holographic universe hypothesis': the information of our entire universe is actually just 'projected' onto a two-dimensional boundary, like a three-dimensional holographic photo that appears three-dimensional but is essentially two-dimensional coding.
This already sounds explosive, but Wazza is even harsher; he uses this principle to derive a conclusion:
Even if you use this most space-efficient 'holographic method' to encode, as long as you want to simulate an object that weighs slightly more than a few fleas, it would already consume more energy than it can bear.
Let alone the entire universe. Even simulating the particle-level details of a single planet like Earth (which is at the Planck scale) would require turning an entire 'globular cluster' (a celestial body made up of a hundred thousand stars) into energy. Simulating one second of Earth's operation would burn through a whole chunk of the galaxy's gravitational binding energy.
And if you think 'then I'll just simulate it roughly', for example, using the current standard physical scale to simulate, that's also not going to work: a supercomputer in the real world would take millions of years to simulate the blink of an eye you just did.
Yes, millions of years count as one second.
You want this thing to run a whole virtual life? Even AI wouldn't want to do that job.
You might say: then let's use quantum computers!
Sorry, that doesn't work.
Wazza directly extinguished this notion: whether it is a traditional computer or a quantum computer, as long as it processes or eliminates information, it cannot escape the hard constraints of energy conservation and information entropy increase.
While quantum computers can theoretically handle certain tasks faster, they are still limited by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The faster the computing speed, the higher the energy requirements. But if you want the simulator to run fast without burning out, that is physical cheating.
Thermodynamics wouldn't allow it.
Then simulating 'our brain' should be feasible, right?
Some say simulating the entire universe is too extravagant, so just simulating our human brain would suffice.
Even Wazza found this road to be no easy task. Even if we only simulate our brains, we still need to provide this virtual brain with a self-consistent physical environment that simulates the world we perceive, and even if it is 'fake', it must be flawlessly believable.
And this will quickly enter the high-intensity computing area, still facing those eternally unchanged energy limitations.
Of course, there is an extreme possibility — only simulating you, and everyone else is fake, including this article I'm writing.
But then why are you even reading articles? You're already deceiving yourself; do you still want me to convince you with reality?
This is no longer a physical question; it is a philosophical question, or more precisely, a question of adolescent delusion.
The truth is actually simpler: we are reality.
Wazza's conclusion is quite straightforward:
The simplest explanation that adheres to Occam's razor principle is that our current world is the 'real physical universe.' We are not programs, not virtual characters; no one has ever written code for us.
The article you are currently reading is something written and read by a bunch of carbon-based humans in the real world.
You can believe that in the future someone might create stronger virtual reality technology, even simulating dreams. But to believe that our entire universe is some civilization running a simulation program would require first overturning existing physical laws. And there is currently no evidence to support that.
In other words: you live in reality, not in a computer, nor in a 'system bug.'
You are not Neo; you are you.
So, stop daydreaming about waking up and hurry up and go to sleep.
This article is adapted from: Professor Proton
References:
Vazza, Franco. 'Astrophysical constraints on the simulation hypothesis for this Universe: why it is (nearly) impossible that we live in a simulation.' Frontiers in Physics, 2025.