Frequently asked questions

No. There is no win condition, no score, and no designed story. It is a continuously running simulation you can watch.

Each organism's decisions come from a small neural network, so in that narrow, technical sense, yes. It is not a chatbot, an assistant, or anything that models language or holds a conversation. See how it works for the actual mechanism.

No. Nobody writes rules for what a "successful" organism should do. Behaviour comes from a neural network shaped by evolution and, within an individual's own lifetime, by limited plasticity in response to what happens to it.

No. The browser view is read-only. There is no control that reaches back into the simulation, for anyone, including the people who built this.

Yes. The simulation runs continuously on a server, whether anyone is watching or not.

Yes. There is exactly one Public Universe 1. Every visitor's browser is a window into that same world at the same moment, never a separate copy.

They can manipulate material and physically alter the terrain, and that alteration can persist. That is not the same claim as "building" in the sense of intentional construction, and this site does not make that stronger claim. See research notes for what has actually been observed.

Unknown. Their neural controllers evolve under selection pressure for survival and reproduction, not for any measure of intelligence, and this project makes no claim about where that process leads over a long run.

No claim is made either way. There is no evidence this project's methodology could produce that would support a claim of consciousness, so none is made.

Physically, yes: nothing prevents it. Whether they actually do, in any given run, is an open, empirical question. See the Universe 1 page for the current, real answer for this particular universe.

Two separated founder populations create a real, observable question: will they ever cross the water between them, and if they do, what happens next. It is a deliberately simple setup that produces a genuinely uncertain, checkable outcome rather than a scripted one.

The universe's history up to that point remains part of its permanent record. This project's stance on resetting a universe after extinction has not been finalised publicly; if and when it is, this answer will be updated to say so plainly.

Public Universe 1's physics are frozen for its entire life and will not be altered while it runs. Restarting the server resumes the same universe from where it left off; it does not create a new one. There is no plan to reset it for the sake of a fresh start.

No. Supporting the project pays for hosting and development. It has no mechanism for reaching the simulation and never will. See support.

Unknown, and deliberately not promised. It runs for as long as it can be kept running.

For research, press, sponsorship or other enquiries, email hello@emergentlife.co.uk.