So we're not saying that any of these mind-blowing theories about the nature of everything are accurate, we're just saying that they were proposed by people smarter than us, and it's fun to think about how ...

The universe is a really strange place, and as science progresses, it just keeps looking weirder. So when fringe theories like the below come about, your first impulse is to laugh them off, but then you think, "Is it really that much stranger than what we know now?"

6 We Might Be Living in the Matrix

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In The Matrix, Keanu Reeves is horrified to learn that the universe he's been living in is actually a computer program designed by a giant, malicious robot intelligence, and that he's actually a hairless man-baby swimming in a vat of goop in the bowels of a dystopian machine-brain. That's about as fictional as science fiction can get, but there are working scientists in the real world who wonder seriously about the idea that we might be living in an actual Matrix.

Warner Bros.

"Shit. So that red pill wasn't Ecstasy."

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First, there's British philosopher Nick Bostrom, who came up with a statistical argument that we're living in an extremely sophisticated version of The Sims. The idea is that we have the ability and the inclination to build our own simulated realities, as evidenced by the growing video game industry. Thus it's inevitable that we'll build our own Matrix one day, when our level of technology allows it. That simulation will continue to grow in realism and complexity until one day it will have its own civilization, who will want to build a simulation of their own, and onward to infinity.

Electronic Arts

How much pixelation do you have over your junk? If your answer is any at all, you're probably living in The Sims.

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If that's true, then there might be a virtually infinite number of simulations out there, so the chances that we're one of them are actually much higher than the chances that we're not.

Then there's physicist Silas Beane from the University of Bonn in Germany. His theory is that, if we are actually living in a computer simulation, then our universe should have a "resolution" -- in other words, there should be a limit to how small something can be, just like nothing can be smaller than the pixels on your computer screen.