You wake up in the morning, reach for your phone, and the screen lights up before you even touch it. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe the simulation you're living in is lagging by a few milliseconds. Sounds absurd? Maybe not. In recent years, a strange idea has quietly crept out of science fiction and into the minds of some of the world’s smartest people—from physicists and computer scientists to philosophers and tech billionaires—which is: what if our entire universe, from the galaxies above to the vada pav on your plate, is nothing more than a computer simulation? Let me repeat that. What if we’re not living in the “real” world at all but inside a complex, coded universe running on someone else’s server?

Wait, who started this crazy thought? It might surprise you, but the idea doesn’t come from conspiracy theorists. It comes from serious scientists. In 2003, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed a now-famous argument: If civilisations become advanced enough to run realistic simulations of the universe, and if they have the interest to do so, then chances are we are already inside one of those simulations. Why? Because once such simulations are possible, they could run millions of versions of “Earth” with virtual humans. Statistically speaking, we are more likely to be one of the simulations than the original. Think of it like Netflix. If you have one real event but a million shows based on it, which one are you most likely to be watching? Probably one of the shows. Now imagine we are inside that show.

Physics Is Acting Suspiciously Digital: At first, this sounds like pure fantasy. But here’s where it gets strange—physics itself is starting to look digital. We used to think the universe was continuous like a smooth........

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