Science & Technology

If we live in a simulation, how much computer memory does it need ?

By T.K. Randall
November 4, 2021 ·  67 comments

Are we all plugged into the Matrix ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Glogger / Chris Aimone What if we told you that the world you live in isn't real ? It might sound like a concept straight out of the Keanu Reeves science fiction favorite 'The Matrix', but according to some of the world's top minds, the idea that we are living inside a sophisticated computer simulation is not only possible, it may actually be more likely than the idea that we are living in the real world.

But like all computer programs, such a complex simulation - which would presumably include the entire observable universe - would have to be stored somewhere.

Intrigued by the possibility, physicist Melvin Vopson from the University of Portsmouth has sought to calculate just how much computer memory the entire universe would actually require.To do this, he started by first determining how much information there is in a single subatomic particle, then multiplied this by an estimate for the total number of particles in the universe.

This calculation comes to a rather ridiculous 10^93 bits - or 600 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion - needed to store the entire universe in computer memory.

Of course if we are living in a computer simulation, it's likely to be one created by a much more advanced civilization (or even our 'future' selves), meaning that such levels of computer storage might not be particularly excessive or unachievable.

As things stand, it's a bit like trying to imagine how the latest big budget video games (which can exceed 100gb in size) could be stored in the memory of an old 1980s 8-bit home computer.

Source: Live Science | Comments (67)

Tags: Simulation