About This Video

If everything we know as reality is simply a computer program being run by some complicated set of cosmic algorithms, then where’s the computer and who’s the programmer? Although it is difficult to imagine a machine that can simulate an entire universe down to the subatomic level, as pioneering computer scientist Edward Fredkin explains, a computer can create representations of space with completely different laws governing them. He believes the same could apply outside our known universe.

More from this series: Rebooting the Cosmos

Recorded June 2011; Posted September 2011