For years, the idea that our universe might be a vast computer simulation has hovered between science fiction and serious theory. It’s an idea that feels intuitively possible in a digital age — after all, if humans can simulate weather systems or galaxies, could a far more advanced civilization simulate the whole universe?
But a new mathematical paper argues that the idea collapses under its own logic. Published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, the study claims that the universe cannot be an algorithmic simulation — meaning a finite set of computational rules or code cannot fully generate it.
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The team, led by Mir Faizal with co-authors Lawrence M. Krauss, Arshid Shabir, and Francesco Marino, approached the problem from mathematical principles. Instead of examining physical evidence for or against the “simulation hypothesis,” they examined whether a simulation-based universe is even logically possible.
Their argument draws on foundational results in mathematical logic, including Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Alfred Tarski’s undefinability theorem, and Gregory Chaitin’s incompleteness theorem. These theorems, in essence, say that any formal system — anything that runs on precise rules, like a computer program or a mathematical model — will always contain true statements that cannot be derived or computed from within that system.
Translated out of formal mathematics: if reality were an algorithmic simulation, there would exist truths about the universe that no underlying program could ever produce or account for. In that sense, not every feature of the cosmos could arise from a purely computational process.
That’s the core of the authors’ claim — that reality cannot be completely algorithmic, and therefore cannot be the product of any digital simulation, however powerful. As Faizal explained, “Drawing on mathematical theorems related to incompleteness and indefinability, we demonstrate that a fully consistent and complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone. It requires non-algorithmic understanding, which by definition is beyond algorithmic computation and therefore cannot be simulated. Hence, this universe cannot be a simulation.”
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The paper presents a precise mathematical case that a fully algorithmic “Theory of Everything” — the idea of a single, fully computable set of rules describing all of physics — is impossible: such a system will always leave some truths undecidable. From this, the authors infer that since any simulation would itself be algorithmic, it could never reproduce those undecidable aspects — and therefore could not reproduce the universe.
The work challenges one of the most discussed modern ideas about reality — and, in doing so, tests the limits of computation itself in describing reality. If their reasoning holds, then even a perfect machine couldn’t fully simulate the universe, because some truths about it would always lie beyond calculation.
So, for those still wondering whether we’re living inside The Matrix, this study doesn’t rely on philosophical guesswork or futuristic speculation. It relies on math — math that seems to say, quite simply, the universe can’t be programmed.
Personally, I keep thinking — if the universe really were a simulation, and we could someday simulate everything including ourselves, even small actions might break the illusion. What if a simulation predicts I’ll move my hand in a minute, but seeing that, I don’t? Maybe that’s where consciousness steps in — the one thing that can’t be simulated.
Story Source: Mir Faizal et al. (2025), published in Journal of Holography Applications in Physics. Read the study here.