I just was looking through the reddit archives and found this story. It made me seriously ponder if a simulation of this type would ever be possible. At first glance i would say " No of course this isn't possible,how would a computer simulation become sentient?" but then i got to thinking and after much thought realized that this game would be a bottom-up simulation of our solar system and with that we would never even begin to realize how a sim like this would work unless it was actually attempted step by step.

So /r/futurology what are your thoughts on a project like this? What would the computing requirements be? Is it even possible? I am waiting for some intellectual answers.