The Universe is a simulation; that is the theory that is taking the scientific world by storm. But how could you simulate the entire Universe with a computer? You would need a computer the size of the Universe to contain the data concerning the spin state of every electron in the Universe as well as the positions of every speck of matter in every dust cloud in existence. It is possible that the simulation is only in depth when we look closely at something. When we observe something at a quantum level it changes behavior and this is changed when we are not observing it. That is a strange fact when you are working with objects on a quantum level; it is not possible to change the spin state of an electron affecting its twin in deep space to send a binary message. If we could then we would be able to send data faster than the speed of light; but that is not possible. If the entire Universe is a simulation then where is the computer that is storing the data and performing the data processing? It could be something larger than we can possibly imagine; a super computer that can actually simulate an entire Universe seamlessly. But how is that possible. There is one theory that the Universe is actually computing its own next form. Therefore the entire Universe could be simulating itself and it is the massive computer itself. But what is powering it? Dark Matter could provide the answers; we cannot see Dark Matter at all; galaxies exist that are larger than ours and should have flown apart due to their rotation; but they are held together by Dark Matter. There was a scientist that recorded a strange sound that means there is a fuzziness to matter when you look closely enough; the theory is that the whole Universe is holographic in nature and is an illusion. That would make sense if the entirety of our Universe is a computer simulation and we are nothing but computer data.
But who or what started the simulation? Was it an alien race of beings that exist outside of our known Universe or something else that we cannot even imagine? Something that lived outside of our known Universe would be a being that would be incompressible to our senses and would be akin to meeting God. But it is a possibility worth exploring to further our knowledge of our large and complex Universe. We would not be able to visit them as travelling outside the Universe is not really possible at this time or ever for that matter. The Universe is said to be about 500,000,000,000 light-years across; the area that we can see is only 14,000,000,000 light-years across in comparison; and the edges of our part of the Universe are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. So we cannot catch up with any planets that exist that far away. Even reaching Gliese 581 d which is 20 light-years away would be a prohibitive mission; that planet is a good candidate for life but it is too far away from Earth for us to visit. arXiv:1207.4515 [astro-ph.EP]. Still we have to imagine that there could be life on many planets in the giant Universe; even in worlds 100 billion light years away that would obviously be unreachable to humans due to the distance involved in travelling that far to visit a planet that would not exist by the time we reached it. There could be aliens living on that planet like us that are looking up at the sky and wondering the same thing that we are. Are we alone? I just watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager that involved an ancient race of dinosaurs that evolved on Earth a long time ago; long before humans and developed space travel and reached the Delta Quadrant. That is a pretty far-fetched story; considering the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across; crossing it in any time frame seems unlikely unless you could fold space or develop warp drive. Reaching the speed of light alone is impossible since the ships mass becomes nearly infinite and therefore it requires infinite energy to attempt to go faster.
But we might eventually find another way of travelling through space; some new drive technology that could allow us to travel to Alpha Centauri. That is only four and a half light-years away from us; or Sirius. Alpha Centauri is closer though and it is possible that life could exist there as well. We would still require a method of travelling through space that was fast enough to reach that star in a reasonable time though. It is not like we could fly there in a rocket unless the fuel tank was the size of the Sun. Still; it is not a bad thing to dream of space travel. It is not unlikely that we could develop some technology in the future that could allow us to reach the stars and colonize some far off planet and perpetuate our species even after some disaster that could befall the Earth in the future. Then we would become a space faring race and not be stuck on this planet forever. That is not a future we want; if we could stop these pointless wars and concentrate as one world on building a colony off world then we would be better off in the long run. A base on the Moon would be a good idea to start with; that would be a good staging base for a mission to Mars. The day though that aliens come to Earth and announce their presence to the whole world will be the day that the entire world will change forever; our religious leaders would be quite taken aback when the alien visitors came down in Central Park and got out of their ship to greet the amazed onlookers. Imagine the reaction of the general public to that. There are strange vehicles in the sky; there are many sightings of UFOS all around the world; I wish they would announce their presence instead of hiding in the sky like that. Why are we waiting for first contact all this time? If they are aliens from another world then they must be able to fold space to travel such massive interstellar distances to visit earth. We surely could benefit from possessing that technology ourselves; we would be able to explore the entire solar system in person and even travel to close stars looking for life on the extra-solar planets. The only star we would not want to visit is VY Canis Majoris; that is a red hyper-giant that is believed to be about 1,975,000,000 kilometers in diameter.
This giant star it is believed will explode soon and generate a massive outburst of energy; but it is far enough away from the Earth to not pose a danger to us. Here is to hoping that someday we can travel into space and actually see some of these wonders first-hand. Spending $1,382,363,463,549 dollars on wars since 2001 is an obscene amount and no wonder there are people starving around the world. Visiting costofwar.com is a depressing experience indeed.