Beyond Our Earthly Problems: The Universe May Be A Simulation After All

Proving that information has mass can explain mysteries like dark matter. That’s because the physical properties of the bits of information mimic what dark matter appears to be—small bits of mass particles without charge or spin.

Confirming that information is the fifth state of matter touches on a weird idea: that the universe is actually a computer simulation. As an academic exercise, scientists have suggested this idea before. If information is indeed a key component of everything in the universe, then perhaps a computer somewhere is running our whole world as a simulation.