Monisha Ravisetti was a science writer at CNET. She covered climate change, space rockets, mathematical puzzles, dinosaur bones, black holes, supernovas, and sometimes, the drama of philosophical ...

Let's say we build some ridiculous planet-sized computer — one so powerful it could simulate our entire universe. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here ...

Few scientific ideas have leapt from philosophy seminars to dinner-table debates as quickly as the claim that our universe might be an artificial construct. The simulation hypothesis promises a ...

The idea that reality might be a kind of cosmic software has shifted from late-night dorm debate to a live question in ...

Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow ...

A military planner at the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, watches a battle unfold without taking his eyes off the computer screen. The software is tracking a million vehicles spread over ...

In 1952, at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, theoretical physicists Enrico Fermi, John Pasta and Stanislaw Ulam brainstormed ways to use the MANIAC, one of the world’s first supercomputers, to solve ...

"I am at a loss." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. We see countless stars and galaxies sparkling in the universe today, but how ...

The notion that we live as characters in someone else’s video game is irresistible to many, even outside of science fiction bookshelves. Googling the term “simulation hypothesis” returns numerous ...

Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? A growing number of scientists are suggesting that the idea that we are all living in a simulation may not be completely far-fetched. Simulation theory is the ...

“A sun of our own and it’s made in Britain!” crowed the headline. The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) believed its 120-ton experimental reactor Zeta was almost certainly generating neutrons from ...

We have long taken it for granted that gravity is one of the basic forces of nature—one of the invisible threads that keeps the universe stitched together. But suppose that this is not true. Suppose ...