We might be living inside a computer right now. Scientists have figured out a way to test if this theory is correct. The idea is that any civilisation that could evolve to a ‘post-human’ stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. With the universe being infinite and all, the probability that we are the first civilisation to reach that level is absurd.

If this has happened before, then we are located somewhere in a chain of simulations within simulations. Researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany found evidence the Matrix is real. They didn’t prove we were living in a simulation, but they designed their own simulation that was a lot like our universe. The ability to do that, on top of the fact that it is virtually impossible that we are the first civilisation with access to this type of technology, makes it very likely that our world is artificial.

The way they are going to test and try to prove that we are in fact living in a simulation, is going to work by dividing space into a four-dimensional grid. Doing so allows researchers to examine the force which binds subatomic particles together into neutrons and protons - but it also allows things to happen in the simulation, including the development of complex physical "signatures", that researchers don't program directly into the computer. In looking for these signatures, such as limitations on the energy held by cosmic rays, they hope to find similarities within our own universe.

If those signatures appear in both? Then we just might be living inside a computer, simulated inside another computer, that was simulated by another computer, which was simu...