One of NASA’s finest scientists, Nick Bostrom, has made a daring assertion, stating that we are all trapped in a simulation and are being held at bay by a clever extraterrestrial civilization.

He did make a Matrix reference here, but he quickly stressed that the picture and the reality we live in must be two separate things. In the video, we are shown to be nothing more than physical bodies trapped in liquid-filled tanks, but according to Nick, we don’t even have a body in real life since we are nothing more than brain particles scattered over the brain’s network of circuits.

Rich Terrile agrees with this approach, suggesting that in the next 10 years or so, we will be able to adequately build a computer simulation of that size. What makes it so improbable that something has previously occurred in a more advanced civilization if we’re so close? Terrile himself mentions Moore’s Law, which states that computer capacity doubles every year.

Based on this, we will be able to calculate and recreate every living human existence on Earth in roughly 80 years. We’re looking at a gloomy world, but as best as we can tell, this is the dreadful reality we live in. Video: