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Is the universe actually a giant quantum
computer? According to Seth Lloyd -- Professor of Quantum-Mechanical
Engineering at MIT and originator of the first technologically
feasible design for a working quantum computer -- the answer
is yes. This wonderfully accessible book illuminates the
professional and personal paths that led him to this remarkable
conclusion.
All interactions between particles in the
universe, Lloyd explains, convey not only energy but also
information -- in other words, particles not only collide,
they compute. And what is the entire universe computing,
ultimately? "Its own dynamical evolution," he
says, "As the computation proceeds, reality unfolds."
To elucidate his theory, Lloyd examines
the history of the cosmos, posing questions that in other
hands might seem unfathomably complex: How much information
is there in the universe? What information existed at the
moment of the Big Bang and what happened to it? How do quantum
mechanics and chaos theory interact to create our world?
Could we attempt to re-create it on a giant quantum computer?
Programming the Universe presents
an original and compelling vision of reality, revealing
our world in an entirely new light.
Seth Lloyd is Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at MIT, principal investigator at the Research
Laboratory of Electronics, and the designer of the first
feasible quantum computer. He has been featured in The
New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The
Washington Post, The Economist, and Wired,
among other publications. His name frequently appears (as
both writer and subject) in the pages of Nature,
New Scientist, Science, and Scientific
American. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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