Max Verstappen equalled Sebastian Vettel's nine wins in a row record at the Dutch Grand...

Bologna’s leaning Century Garisenda tower has been sealed off by police, following fears that it could collapse. The 154-foot tower is the counterpart to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and now has a 16-foot barrier erected around it (estimated to cost £3.7 million) to prevent any debris causing damage or injury. It first closed in October after sensors detected it had begun to lean, however, the council are now dubbing the situation ‘critical’. A civil protection plan to preserve buildings nearby is now in place.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will return to South Carolina on Wednesday to reengage with Republican voters who last saw the GOP presidential candidate in mid-July.

The New York Jets faithful are doing their part to recruit free agent running back Dalvin Cook to the franchise.The New York Jets' front office has been busy at work all summer preparing to make the leap to contention in the AFC. It started, of course, with the trade for soon-to-be Hall of ...

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room." So says Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus in sci-fi classic ‘The Matrix’ as he offers Keanu Reeves’s Neo the choice to find out just how “deep the rabbit hole goes”. Now, just as Neo discovered that the "life" he'd been living was little more than an algorithmic construct, scientists and philosophers are arguing that we could be stuck inside a simulation ourselves. In a paper published earlier this month, physicist Melvin Vopson, of the University of Portsmouth, offered scientific evidence for a philosophical theory known as the simulation hypothesis. This, in a nutshell, posits that the entire universe and our objective reality are just super-advanced virtual reality illusions. Elon Musk is among the well-known fans of the theory, which – as Dr Vopson notes in his paper – has been “gaining traction in scientific circles as well as in the entertainment industry”. The university lecturer also pointed out that recent developments in a branch of science known as information physics “appear to support this possibility”. Information physics suggests that physical reality is made up of bits of information. However, Dr Vopson has gone further and is working to prove that information has a physical mass and is a fundamental building block of the universe. He even claims that information could be the mysterious dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe. In previous research, the physicist proposed that all elementary particles (the smallest known building blocks in the universe), store information about themselves, much like DNA in humans. Then, in 2022, he discovered a new law of physics, christened the second law of infodynamics, which states that entropy – the degree of randomness or disorder – within an isolated information system either remains constant or decreases over time. In other words, the system becomes less and less chaotic, implying that there is some kind of mechanism governing it rather than random chance. “I knew then that this revelation had far-reaching implications across various scientific disciplines,” Dr Vopson said in a statement released by the University of Portsmouth. “What I wanted to do next is put the law to the test and see if it could further support the simulation hypothesis by moving it on from the philosophical realm to mainstream science.” Is the Universe a Simulation? | Melvin Vopson www.youtube.com Dr Vopson employed the law in a range of different fields, including genetics, cosmology and even symmetry. Here, he found that the abundance of symmetry in the Universe (think snowflakes and facial structures) could be explained by the second law of infodynamics. "Symmetry principles play an important role with respect to the laws of nature, but until now there has been little explanation as to why that could be,” he said. “My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature's inclination towards it." Again, put simply, nature prefers things to be as well-ordered as possible. He continued: “This approach, where excess information is removed, resembles the process of a computer deleting or compressing waste code to save storage space and optimise power consumption.” As a result, this “supports the idea that we’re living in a simulation.” Dr Vopson is serious about this idea and, last year, even launched a crowdfunding campaign to test it. At the time, he announced that he had designed an experiment to determine whether we are all just characters in an advanced virtual world. “There is a growing community out there looking seriously at the possibility that information is more fundamental to everything than we think,” he said in a statement released back in December. “If information is a key component of everything in the universe, it would make sense that a vast computer somewhere is in control. “Assuming the universe is indeed a simulation, then it must contain a lot of information bits hidden everywhere around us. I’ve devised an experiment that proposes a way of extracting this information to prove it’s there.” His proposed experiment is based on his conclusion that information is physical and that elementary particles have a DNA of information about themselves. He posited that the information in an elementary particle could be detected and measured by using particle-antiparticle collision. “We can measure the information content of a particle by erasing it. If we delete the information from the particles, we can then look at what’s left,” he said in the December statement. “This experiment is highly achievable with our existing tools, and I’m hoping the crowdfunding site will help us achieve it.” And whilst the crowdfunder closed well before reaching its proposed £185,000 target, Dr Vopson still hopes to carry out the ambitious test. Following his most recent paper, he suggested the experiment had the power to confirm the “fifth state of matter in the universe” and “change physics as we know it.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Pep Guardiola says Manchester City rising star Cole Palmer can fill the void left by Kevin De...

Ukraine says its missile strike on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea successfully targeted a meeting of senior naval officials, with “top” commanders among “dozens of dead and wounded”. Kyiv launched the missile attack on the fleet based in the port city of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea on Friday morning. Ukrainian officials said the attack, targeting what is believed to be the best of Russia’s navy, was timed to coincide with the naval commanders’ meeting. On Saturday morning, it followed this up with another missile attack on Sevastopol, according to a local Russian-installed official. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the attack resulted in any deaths or injuries but in a statement on Saturday, the Ukrainian military said the Friday attack had left “dozens of dead and wounded occupiers, including the top management of the fleet”. Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, told Voice of America on Saturday that at least nine people were killed and 16 injured as a result of Kyiv’s attack on the Black Sea Fleet on Friday. He claimed that Alexander Romanchuk, a Russian general commanding forces along the key southeastern front line, was “in a very serious condition” following the attack. The Russian defence ministry initially said that Friday’s strike killed one service member at the Black Sea Fleet headquarters, but later issued a statement that he was missing. The Ukrainian military said the air force conducted 12 strikes on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters, targeting areas where personnel, military equipment and weapons were concentrated. It said two anti-aircraft missile systems and four Russian artillery units were hit. Crimea has served as the key hub supporting Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Sevastopol, the main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since the 19th century, has had a particular importance for navy operations since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has increasingly targeted naval facilities in Crimea in recent weeks while the brunt of its summer counteroffensive makes slow gains in the east and south of Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said. Military experts say it is essential for Ukraine to keep up its attacks on targets in Crimea to degrade Russian morale and weaken its military. Additional reporting by agencies Read More Ukraine-Russia war - live: Kyiv inflicting ‘hell’ on Russian lines as counter-offensive escalates A Ukrainian train is a lifeline connecting the nation's capital with the front line Pope blames weapons industry for Russia-Ukraine war and 'martyrdom' of Ukrainian people

Danelo Cavalcante, 34, was arrested in a wooded area inside a police perimeter, says a law enforcement source.

STEVENS POINT, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 25, 2023--

By Trixie Yap (Reuters) -Oil prices edged down in early trading on Wednesday, extending losses from a 1% drop in

Aditya-L1 comes just days after India made history by becoming the first to land near the Moon's south pole.

'RHONY' alum Tinsley Mortimer and Robert Bovard married in Palm Beach, Florida, one month after being engaged