A brilliant physicist has provided evidence that we are living in a Matrix. Here's a simple explanation of their findings.

Brilliant physicist, eccentric recluse, and talented entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram has completed a theory that demonstrates we live in a Matrix and explains how it specifically operates. Back in 2002, he published the bestseller "A New Kind of Science," where he outlined how the Matrix creates space and matter. Recently, he explained how the Matrix calculates time, the illusory state in which we are immersed. Classical physicists are at a loss as to what to think. They can't just dismiss it: all the institutions in the world use the computational environment Mathematica, developed by Wolfram. On the other hand, it all seems quite strange—and it doesn't quite align with the genius's findings regarding the theory of relativity.

We present another, the most thorough attempt to depict the world around us as an illusion.

THERE'S NOTHING ELSE LIKE IT

Stephen Wolfram was known as a wunderkind, albeit a peculiar one: he struggled with arithmetic but excelled when it came to algebra. For him, two plus two is still a problem. Such is the case with a mathematician who can't really count.

At the age of 15, he was writing articles on quantum field theory and elementary particle physics, effortlessly publishing them in peer-reviewed journals. By the time he started to shave his first mustache, he had accumulated several dozen publications.

He easily enrolled at Eton but dropped out, then went to Oxford, also leaving there, and eventually moved to Caltech, where he became a PhD in theoretical physics at the age of 20. The greatest physicist of our time and beyond, Richard Feynman, wrote in a recommendation letter: "I don't know anyone else who understands the essence of things so deeply. He has studied everything, and he has his own opinion on everything." After such a letter, Caltech quietly hired Wolfram, and his triumphant journey through the universities of the New World began: Caltech, Princeton, Illinois.

At some point, the physicist decided to make some money. He left academia and founded Wolfram Research, the company that launched the Mathematica computational environment, present in every laboratory and institution around the world; officially, several million copies have been sold, and even more have likely been pirated.

Suddenly wealthy, Wolfram pulls another stunt. He disappears for ten years. It turns out he secluded himself in the wilderness with other like-minded geeks to develop his highly original theory.

When his thick book "A New Kind of Science" was published in 2002, the press greeted it with thunderous applause. The mysterious genius. The recluse returned from the depths. He brought new knowledge. The book sold out, then sold out again, and the media issued streams of enthusiastic reviews.

The scientific community, however, was not so impressed. And now, for a quarter of a century: Wolfram discovers something, scientists say, "no, not that," he argues, he refines, some agree, some do not; in general, it's lively and interesting.

Now he has taken on time. The essence against which even such titans have broken their teeth.

CALCULATING THE FUTURE

Great physical theories are good in that they can be quickly and clearly articulated. The details may be quite complex, but the overall idea is often simple.

Being, Wolfram teaches, is nothing more than a mathematical (computational) code. And just a few lines of it. Moreover, the code itself is elementary.

Something (let's call it the Universe) is constantly performing calculations. A vast number of calculations, but very simple ones. These calculations create space, matter, and now, as it turns out, time.

Let’s start with time. Something that "ticks" only in one direction, only forward—that is a self-replicating code that cannot stop. The Universe calculates each subsequent moment. But it creates not events, as one might think, but time itself.

It seems that if we know the formula (and Wolfram claims to know it), we can compute and thus create any moment in time ourselves. Want the year 3000, or the same year, but BCE? Create it, lock it in some room, and go there to see what happens.

Unfortunately, no. The result of each subsequent second's calculation depends on the previous result. Despite the simplicity of the initial code, the outcome is unpredictable unless we compute the entire chain, every microsecond from our day to the year 3000. And for that, it takes… right, time. Exactly as much time as needed to reach that year 3000 without any calculations. Once again, the effort is not worth the result, and the time machine slips away.

But there is a loophole: the flow of time that once swept us along is not alone. There are infinitely many flows. One can jump into another. And be carried away somewhere.

By proposing this, Wolfram once again argues with Einstein, specifically with his concept of space-time. The temptation to present time as space is great, he says. But in reality, time is the result of constant recalculation of space. To "create" existence as it will be in a second, we need to recalculate all the things in the world anew.

PIXEL LION

I promised earlier that understanding Wolfram's theory is simple. However, it is time to discuss the details, which are not so simple.

In general, Wolfram writes rather heavily (it's even strange that his usually very thick works become bestsellers). This is because he understands deeply what he is doing. He has hired a whole team of popularizers who try hard. But he prefers to articulate important things himself, and here, of course, the waters have become murky; school knowledge may not suffice.

Fortunately, there is just one thing to grasp for everything to open up—the hypergraph.

What is a graph (before it becomes "hyper")? It is a way to represent anything using points and the connections between them. We remember that Wolfram is a computer scientist, almost the founding father of virtual reality, so this is close to him.

Let's imagine a lion. A photograph of a lion. We understand that a photograph consists of points. It is also evident that neighboring points are connected. For example, light brown fur smoothly transitions into almost white underfur, represented as a gradual change of color from point to point. It would be strange to suddenly encounter a green or red pixel. So, this is the graph of a lion (those who know this better—please don't scold me; I'm trying to keep it very simple).

Now let's imagine a three-dimensional lion. A hologram of a lion. In such a model, points can grow not only in a plane but in any direction, and the connections between them become more complex. This is a hypergraph.

The Universe, according to Wolfram, is a collection of such hypergraphs. In the beginning, there was a pixel and the rules of calculations. The pixel calculated the next two, those another pair, and off it went. Wolfram claims he has managed to reduce everything in the world to a pattern grown in this way, and all laws of physics to the elementary arithmetic underlying the world's computer.

Does this mean that everything around us is an illusion, points of a hologram computed by Nature itself? Well… yes.

THREE ARGUMENTS AGAINST

Physicists, as mentioned, do not favor Wolfram, and here are the main reasons.

The first. After writing his share of articles in peer-reviewed journals at the age of 15, he lost interest in journals and now publishes books and articles himself. "He breaks the rules, and that's why people are angry with him," says physicist Sabine Hossenfelder. She herself published an article "against Wolfram," but the new theory of time made her change her stance: "It seems we need to finally take a look at what he is doing."

The second. Allegedly, everything he says and writes was already said and written by mathematician Alan Turing in the early 20th century. Wolfram acknowledges: I am a continuer of Turing, but I have done what he did not think of.

So far, these are rather weak arguments. And here comes the third.

Wolfram's theory does not align with the theory of relativity. And the discrepancy is fundamental. As can be easily observed, Wolfram's universe is computed using points, pixels, including time. There is a certain length, below which there is nothing, like a pixel on a screen. There is also a moment, below which there will be nothing, a pixel of time.

But in reality, it is precisely in this matter that the theory of relativity does not align with quantum mechanics. Einstein does not consist of pixels. Fields in the theory of relativity are precisely that—fields, waves on the sea, smoothly flowing into one another. And Max Planck does consist of pixels—he