Could the Big Bang have been the launch of a cosmic computer programme? Scotland’s Astronomer Royal Catherine Heymans explains the science.

What if your reality was nothing more than a complex computer simulation? And if you were just a program on someone else’s hard drive, how would you know? Who would be controlling your every move?

The idea that reality might be a kind of cosmic software has moved from late night dorm debates into serious physics journals, and now dueling teams of researchers are claiming they finally have the ...