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• Many philosophers and scientists have pondered if we live in a simulated universe, and University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson believes he has evidence.

• Using his previously formulated Second Law of Infodynamics, Vopson claims that the decrease of entropy in information systems over time could prove that the universe has a built-in “data optimization and compression,” which speaks to its digital nature.

• While these claims warrant investigation, they’re far from a discovery themselves, and would likely need rigorous proof for the scientific community at large to seriously consider this theory.

In the 1999 film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (a.k.a. Neo) discovers a truth to end all truths—the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder (and explains how Neo can learn kung-fu in about five seconds), the idea isn’t quite as carefully relegated to the fiction section as one might expect.

University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, who studies the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile, leans into the cinematic comparison. In an article published on website The Conversation this past October, Vopson invoked the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece, and around the same time, he published a book on the subject—Reality Reloaded, a subtle hat tip to the title of the less successful Matrix sequel. While he is just one among many who’ve contemplated the idea, Vopson claims to have one thing that those before him lacked: evidence.

“In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics,” Vopson said back in 2022. “One of the most powerful laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which establishes that entropy—a measure of disorder in an isolated system – can only increase or stay the same, but it will never decrease.”

Based on this famous law, Vopson similarly expected that entropy in information systems—which his previous research defined as a “fifth state of matter”—should similarly increase over time. But it doesn’t. Instead, it remains constant, or even decreases to a minimum value at equilibrium. This is in direct contrast to the second law of thermodynamics, which inspired Vopson to adopt the Second Law of Information Dynamics (or Infodynamics).

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