Lloyd programming the universe. Programming the Universe

Quotes 76

Entropy is measured in bits. Entropy consists of random, unknown bits. The opposite of entropy is called “negentropy.” Negentropy consists of known, structured bits. The negentropy of a system is a measure of how far the system is from its maximum possible entropy. A living, breathing person has a lot of negentropy, as opposed to, say, helium atoms at constant temperature, which have none at all. We can say that entropy consists of random, “garbage” bits, and negentropy consists of ordered, useful bits. So, the thermodynamic depth of a physical system is equal to the number of useful bits that were needed to create this system.

Simple, regular systems that are easy to create, such as salt crystals, are usually thermodynamically shallow. Completely disordered systems such as our helium atoms, which derive their properties from random processes such as heating, are also thermodynamically shallow. But to create intricate, structured systems such as living systems requires a huge investment of useful bits over several billion years, and such systems are thermodynamically deep.

Gravity responds to the presence of energy. Where the energy density is higher, the fabric of space-time begins to bend a little more.

Bits are created and begin to change their values. Gravity responds to this by gathering matter around the “units.” Quantum bits decohere and random sequences of 0s and 1s are released into the Universe. The calculations begin!

In addition to creating the solid ground on which we walk, gravitational accumulation provides the necessary raw materials to create complexity. As matter assembles into clouds of increased density, the energy that matter contains becomes available for use. The calories we consume to live originate from gravitational accumulation, as a result of which the Sun formed and began to shine.

Gravitational accumulation in the very early Universe is responsible for creating the large-scale structure of galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Randomness arises in the computational universe because the initial state of the universe is a superposition of different program states, each of which sends the universe along one computational path or another, some of these paths leading to complex and interesting behavior. The Quantum Computing Universe follows all of these paths simultaneously, quantum-parallel, and these paths correspond to the decoherent histories described above. Since computational histories are decoherent, we can discuss them over lunch; only one (or other) of these stories actually happened. One of these decoherent stories corresponds to the Universe we see around us.

There is also compelling evidence that the universe supports computation at microscopic levels. The quantum computers that my colleagues and I are building are testament to the ability of matter and energy to perform calculations on the smallest scales: we can control the behavior of atoms, electrons and photons with high precision. Whatever forms matter and energy take at increasingly smaller scales, as long as they obey the laws of quantum mechanics, they can be used for calculations. In a cosmological general purpose computer (that is, a universal computer consisting of the Universe itself), each atom is a bit, and each photon moves its bit from one part of the calculation to another. Whenever an electron or nuclear particle changes its spin direction from clockwise to counterclockwise, its bits are inverted.

Until we have a complete quantum theory of all fundamental physical phenomena, including gravity, we will not be able to find detailed confirmation of the computational mechanics of the Universe. But we can (and do) hope that one day such confirmation will be possible.

On July 22, Seth Lloyd, a professor and famous physicist involved in the creation of quantum computers, gave a lecture in Moscow. He came to Moscow as a special guest of the Second International Conference on Quantum Technologies, organized by the Russian Quantum Center. Lloyd became famous for his book Programming the Universe, in which he argues that the Universe is a huge quantum computer that creates the future through calculations. Look At Me spoke with the famous scientist about why quantum computers are needed, how physicists spend their free time and why science is funky.

Seth Lloyd

MIT professor and creator of quantum computer model

Why do you think that the Universe is a computer?

The universe is made of atoms, but it is important to understand that all of these particles contain information, and when, for example, two elementary particles collide, bits of information are transformed during the process. We can think of the universe as something made of atoms, and that's the traditional way of looking at things, but we can also look at atoms as something that contains information and processes it, like a computer. I'm trying to figure out and build quantum computers and store information in atoms, but atoms do computation anyway, and when we build quantum computers, we just have to try to get atoms to compute in a different way. I approached the creation of quantum computers from a technological point of view, but then I realized that we were, as it were, trying to interfere with the process of calculations that the Universe has been performing for a long time.

How does your theory that the Universe is a quantum computer change your daily life? And how can it change people's perceptions of the world around them?

We usually think of the Universe as consisting of particles of energy, but we can also say that it consists of bits, information particles. As soon as we understand that the Universe carries out calculations and processes information, our worldview immediately changes. First, this approach helps explain things that remain quite mysterious based on other theories. For example, we still cannot accurately answer the question about the origin of life on Earth. In fact, life is the processing of information, it is based on DNA, a molecule that carries information and programs all the systems of the body so that they function the way they function. If you think of life as processing energy and processing information, it becomes clear that the universe can also be considered as processing energy and information. Life naturally arises from these “computations” of the Universe.

D-Wave is one of the first
commercial quantum computers

What are the most complex calculations that have been made using the existing quantum computers you work with?

Existing quantum computers are quite small and weak. So far they are capable of performing several hundred operations with small numbers, with tens. But even with such power, we can learn a lot about how information is processed at the microscopic level. There are also specialized quantum computers. For example, a computer created by the company D-Wave - it is based on a development that my student and I came up with about 10 years ago and did not even hope that it would work. And such quantum computers can perform much more complex calculations and serve some specific purpose.

When powerful quantum computers appear, how will we be able to use them?

There are several areas of application for such computers. One of the most obvious is quite destructive: quantum computers could be used to crack Internet codes and credit card passwords. I love using online shopping and therefore I hope that quantum computers will not be used for this. In addition, there is another, more useful function: we can use them to simulate some natural situations, processes in atoms - this will help to learn more about the origin of the Universe.

Recently, my colleagues and I also realized that quantum computers can be used to study very large amounts of information. For example, if there was a database with genetic data about all people on earth, it would be a database with a huge amount of information, consisting of billions of bits. Quantum computers can help identify patterns in this database, something that conventional computers cannot do. On the other hand, there are difficult privacy issues because I, for example, definitely do not want pharmaceutical companies to have information about my genetic data. If we could use quantum computers to explore data about genes, about populations, while ensuring privacy and finding common patterns, it could help us learn about life on Earth.

When atoms can be thought of as bits, it is very difficult to draw the line between the natural world and the computer world. Do you believe that in the future there will be artificial intelligence and a technological singularity?

I know Ray Kurzweil, he lives near me, and he's a wild and crazy guy. The world's population is growing very quickly, faster than exponentially. A thousand years ago, the world's population doubled every few hundred years, and now it doubles every 10-15 years. It turns out that by 2080 the population will be simply huge, but this is unlikely to happen. It’s the same with information - its quantity doubles every year, that is, soon its quantity will approach infinity. I'm not as optimistic as Ray Kurzweil, and I don't think the singularity is likely to happen. And if it comes, it will, in my opinion, cause more destruction, it will not be a brave new world.

There are so many versions of what the future will be like, and the singularity is only one of them. How do you see the future if powerful quantum computers appear?

Quantum computers will certainly make the future more interesting, but I don't think I know enough to say what will happen in the tech world in the future. I'm sure that when talking about the future, we can quote James Brown: no matter what happens, "it's going to be funky." My main goal for the near future is to do science and enjoy it. I'm lucky to work at MIT because people there do weird, sometimes crazy, but always completely new things every day. The best thing in the world is learning about something new, something amazing.

In your lectures you talk a lot about the impact of technological revolutions on our worldview. Do you think these technological revolutions are needed in third world countries? After all, all technological revolutions took place mainly in Western countries...

Programming the Universe. Seth Lloyd

How interesting the law of attraction works! Just yesterday I published my first article on the expansion of consciousness, and in the morning I received an invitation to the presentation of the book “Programming the Universe” by Seth Lloyd, an American quantum physicist.

"...The Universe is constantly processing information - being a quantum computer of enormous size, it is constantly calculating its own future. And even such fundamental events as the birth of life, sexual reproduction, the emergence of intelligence, can and should be considered as successive revolutions in information processing." This is what it says in the book announcement.

The presenter asked the question: So who programmed the universe?

Seth Lloyd: (laughing) I don’t know myself... Yes, we have already discovered a lot... There was a big explosion, according to science. There was a big explosion of bits, an explosion of information...

I studied the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy increases. but also that it is energy. So what happens when atoms collide, entropy increases?... I didn't understand. I thought, is it possible to create a computer on which information is stored on atoms?

If you take control and control the upper and lower spins of atoms, then I (guessed) these atoms can be forced to calculate. We can use this information and force this computer (meaning the Universe?) to perform the calculations that we need.

Host: These are questions of quantum technologies. How will this help change your life now?

Seth Lloyd: There are currently interesting issues that are being discussed at the Russian Quantum Center. The possibilities are expanding... We all want better telephone communications (laughs), we all need better communications.

The founders of quantum communication are your Russian scientists and the vision that they outlined many decades ago is now being successfully mastered. This is ensuring communications, ultra-precise clocks...

Practical knowledge is one thing, but how the Universe develops is also very interesting!.. Time travel is based on quantum teleportation. We can actually demonstrate real time travel. But there is a well-known paradox: A young man goes back in time, where he meets his grandfather and accidentally kills him. This “grandfather” does not have a son, but he has his own son, whom we sent into the past... What the hell is happening?

We tried to launch a photon into the past not far away, for a few milliseconds, with the task of killing itself.

And what? Did the photon die? Photons, billions of photons died! Only one survived - the one we launched in order to go back and again kill many photons... So... There is something to think about here!

Questions from the audience. The young man asked Lloyd: We all use computers and there are viruses on them. What could be a virus for us?

Seth Lloyd: (laughs) We are the virus! (the audience laughs too)

Quantum mechanics is very strange... In quantum mechanics, an electron can be in two places at the same time. That 0 and 1 (bit) will exist simultaneously. This is the only difference from a regular computer.

Another question was asked by another young man: In conventional computers, the main heating occurs when erasing information. How is this problem solved in a quantum computer?

Seth (laughs): That's why it's dangerous to come to Russia! People here are too smart! You know this!.. You are right, the basis of the origin of heat is where the erasure of bits occurs.

Seth Lloyd: The most important algorithm we want to understand is how the physical laws of the universe are programmed.

The question was asked by a lady: I ​​was very alarmed by your research! Very! There are things that are dangerous. And you yourself said that man is a virus. Will this turn into a confrontation?

Seth Lloyd: Thanks for the question! Now, as for people, in the Universe they are both strong and weak. We are able to control the substance. but we cannot use it correctly.

But we cannot help but program the Universe. Right now we are changing the Earth's climate. Our task is to be friendly viruses for the Universe and program it correctly!

Another question: Does free will exist?

Seth Lloyd: Good question. If something is capable of asking itself the question, what decision will I make, then this something does not know at this moment what decision it will make. This is the answer for me. We don't know what decision we'll make...

I think my iPhone also believes that it has free will... But who am I not to think so?

The guy also had a question about quantum gravity.

Seth Lloyd: One more time! Dangerous intellectuals have captured the audience's attention...(laughs)

Quantum gravity is a region that can be compared to an abyss. It's like you're looking into a black hole and don't want it to suck you in.

The world is full of useless information.. It doesn't disappear anywhere..

We have an interface with the Universe. Our eyes, sense of smell. These are quantum mechanical processes.

Not only is the Universe a quantum mechanical computer, but we interact with it quantum mechanically. If only our brains could...

The presentation is over. People surrounded Seth, took his autograph, asked questions... Well. Well, dear friends, in the meantime I’ll go “program” my brain with a book by Seth Lloyd. Moreover, I have always been interested in the philosophy of the quantum world, and the influence of human perception on reality.

Until next time!

To receive new blog articles, fill out the form in the column on the right.

Sincerely, Galina Konysheva.

"...capable of understanding the Universe"
Of course, our M.S. Boyarsky - the hat is more elegant, and Lloyd's weather music - Neal Morse - is also the result of creative work, but:
Very interesting and fresh. Of course, “we will be able to completely simulate the behavior of the Universe”, it is our nature to model something, even imitate, like artists (“The whole world is a theater”), interact... here the new concept of “information vector” begs to be used. : if the state vectors of a pair of gravitationally unrelated systems seem to “look” directly at each other and the “Lloyd’s universal computer” (?) forces them to communicate, then information will “be born” and “go” directly along the “information vector”, as if along a beam laser, at the moment the interaction begins. Hmm, it turns out... in order to “get smarter”, you need to be in the right place at the right time, since the simple intersection of “vectors of information” in the absence or “shading” of a “useful target” is, as it were, a useless prospect for the program (groping for ways to implement aimless existence!!!) - nothing will change.
In fact, you can imagine large memory cells like the sun-planet and just a meteorite or comet. These kind of ROMs made of dark matter, Flashes, and we are a dream of eternity - scurrying RAMs - modeling part of the universe. Very interesting! Thank you Fedor Aleksandrovich from a simple Russian peasant, who still makes little difference between pseudoscience and Science:
- and the conclusion is simple - nature, our mother, must be protected - after all, this is information for all future generations. Yes, it seems to me so, or does the amount of new information in the astronomical Universe = const? And isn’t new information both the degree of degradation and disintegration of matter (if something arrives somewhere...) and a bridge to the creation of the newest, but also, at the same time, to its “quantum aging” and, therefore... a carrier of what we have invented Time? After all, without information there is no time!? It would be necessary to delve into the works of Yuri Ivanovich Manin, mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov and Stephen William Hawking, otherwise “MSU students hang out on the Internet the most,” and why? .
“Wisdom, forgive me”?!.
P.S.
1 exploit, in addition to the words “universe”, “complexity” “calculates”, it is possible (and works!) “urgency”, “preparedness”, “responsibility” “necessity”, “expediency”...;
2 It’s no longer fashionable for an atheist scientist to touch religion, even in an interview, but for you?;
3 points 1 and 2 for a follower of empiricism (translation into Russian - there is) could already be mastered;
4 story for the press with point 1 and Google - smacks of obvious bias, well, money was spent on a quantum computer immeasurably, there will be N New sneakers from New Balance (black! And the cat Boris fed) after teleportation to Moscow, they, like your ballpoint pen, calculate, and if you also stamp, a “simultaneous quantum event” will occur (whether physical or not) , Seth?) "immediately throughout" Lloyd's Universe.
Good luck Lloyd - keep it up! You are on fire! Class!
PS2
Just think about it! People, not understanding how the storage of information in the brain works - i.e. in his personal computer, analyzes the “computer of the Universe” with the same brain...

Current page: 1 (book has 19 pages in total) [available reading passage: 5 pages]

Seth Lloyd
Programming the Universe. Quantum computer and the future of science

The publishing house thanks the Russian Quantum Center, Sergei Belousov and Viktor Orlovsky for their assistance in preparing the publication.

Translation A. Stand

Editor I. Lisov

Editors of Russian Quantum Center A. Sergeev, D. Falaleev

Project Manager A. Polovnikova

Corrector E. Smetannikova

Computer layout M. Potashkin

Cover illustration GettyImages/Fotobank.ru

© Seth Lloyd, 2006

© Publication in Russian, translation, design. Alpina Non-Fiction LLC, 2013

* * *

Dedicated to Eve

Author's preface to the Russian edition

It is my pleasure to write this special introduction for the Russian edition of the book Programming the Universe. I would like to thank Sergei Belousov, Evgeniy Demler, Misha Lukin and all colleagues from the Russian Quantum Center who helped make the publication of this Russian translation possible. The Russian Quantum Center is a new progressive institution that preserves the great Russian tradition of fundamental science. The center's researchers have already made important contributions to the theory and practice of quantum information processing, which is one of the central themes of my book. I look forward to new great and wonderful scientific achievements from this scientific organization.

The idea behind Programming the Universe is that we should perceive the Universe in terms of the information processing it does at its most fundamental level. In the traditional physical description of the Universe, the main quantity is energy. Recently, however, it has become clear that information is just as important. As Einstein's famous formula states: E = mc², all matter is made of energy. However, information determines the form that matter takes and determines the transformations that energy undergoes. At its core, the Universe is a dance of spins and clicking sounds, in which energy and information are equal partners. The universe is essentially a giant computer in which every atom and every elementary particle contains bits of information, and every time two atoms or two particles collide, those bits change their values. The computational nature of the universe gives rise to its intricacy and complexity: everything that can be calculated—everything that our minds can imagine, and beyond—exists somewhere in the universe.

Russian mathematicians and scientists have written many wonderful pages in information theory. The work of Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was very important for this book: Kolmogorov was one of the founders of the field of algorithmic information theory, which states that information must be defined in the language of its processing, that is, through calculations. Kolmogorov's complexity theory is the natural basis for the theories of computation and complexity formation discussed in this book. Recently, Russian scientists have made extremely important contributions to the theory of quantum information and quantum computing. Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics that studies the behavior of matter and energy in their most fundamental form. At its core, it is strange and counterintuitive: particles have a correspondence in the form of waves, and waves are made of particles - this is wave-particle dualism. One electron can be in two places at the same time, and many things that seem impossible to our classical imagination actually happen every second. The universe is not just a computer; by its nature it is a quantum mechanical computer. The combination of quantum strangeness and information processing is what gives the universe its stability, power, and complexity.

I had the good fortune to begin my scientific career in the 1980s, at a time when Russian and Soviet scientists began to travel abroad after many decades of separation from the rest of the world. In addition to discovering a treasure trove of fundamental scientific information that had previously only been published in Russian, these scientists infused scientific discourse with a unique and wonderful spirit. In my youth I read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and therefore was familiar with the richness of Russian intellectual discussion, but I had never before participated in a real Russian scientific dispute, when people start talking in raised voices, when they hit the table with their fists, when they can break a piece of chalk in their hearts about the board, but in the end, when the problem has been solved, everyone becomes friends again. Passion, persistence and friendly resolution of fundamental problems - this is the true spirit of science! And I hope that the Russian edition of “Programming the Universe” will generate vibrant scientific debate.

Seth Lloyd

Prologue

Apple and the Universe

“In the beginning there was a beat,” I began. The chapel of the 17th-century convent, home to the Santa Fe Institute, which studies complex systems, was filled with the usual audience: physicists, biologists, economists and mathematicians, with a mix of several Nobel laureates. One of the founding fathers of astrophysics and quantum gravity, John Archibald Wheeler, invited me to give a lecture on the topic “Everything from a Bit.” I accepted the challenge. Standing in front of the audience, I began to doubt whether it was worth doing, but there was nowhere to retreat. I took the apple in my hand.

“Things arise from information, that is, from bits,” I continued, nervously tossing an apple into the air. – This apple is a good object. The apple is often associated with information. First, the apple is the fruit of knowledge, “the deadly taste of which brought death and all our suffering to earth.” It carries information about good and evil. Later, it was the trajectory of a falling apple that suggested to Newton the universal laws of gravity, and the curved surface of the apple is a metaphor for Einstein’s curved space-time. Closer to our topic is that the structure of future apple trees is programmed in the genetic code recorded in apple seeds. And one more, no less important property of the apple: it contains free energy - calories of bit-rich energy that helps our body function." I took a bite of the apple.

“Obviously this apple contains different types of information. But how much does it hold? How many bits does it have? I placed the apple on the table and turned to the board to do a quick calculation. “What’s interesting is that the number of bits in an apple has been known since the beginning of the 20th century, when the word “bit” did not yet exist. It may seem like an apple contains an infinite number of bits, but it doesn't. In fact, the laws of quantum mechanics, which govern all physical systems, say that only a finite number of bits are required to determine the microscopic state of the apple and all its atoms. Each atom, or rather its position and velocity, contains only a few bits; Each nuclear spin in the nucleus of an atom stores a single bit. Therefore, there are only a few times more bits in an apple than there are atoms—several million billion billion ones and zeros.”

I turned to the audience. There was no apple on the table. Wow! Who took it? Wheeler looked at me serenely. The face of Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate, inventor of the quark and one of the world's leading physicists, also showed no emotion.

“I can’t go on without an apple. No object, no bits,” I said and sat down.

My hunger strike lasted only a few moments: the engineer from the Bell Labs research center smiled and handed me an apple. I took it and raised it above my head, challenging anyone who would dare to make another attempt at theft. That was my fault. But then it seemed to me that everything was going well.

I continued, “In terms of the amount of information that bits can store, they are all equal. Bit is short for binary digit(binary number) – can be in one of two distinguishable states: 0 or 1, yes or no, “heads” or “tails”. Any physical system where there are two of these states contains one bit. A system with more states contains more bits. A four-state system, such as 00, 01, 10, 11, contains two bits; a system where there are eight states, for example 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111, contains three bits, etc. As I said, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, any physical system limited by a finite volume of space and a finite amount of energy, has a finite number of distinguishable states and therefore contains a finite number of bits. All physical systems contain information. As Rolf Landauer of IBM said, “information is a physical quantity.”

Here Gell-Mann interrupted me: “But are all bits really equal? Let one bit tell us whether some famous but unproven mathematical hypothesis is true, and the bit is obtained as a result of a random coin toss. I think some beats are more important than others.”

I agreed. Different bits play different roles in the Universe. Bits may contain the same amount of information, but the quality and importance of that information varies from bit to bit. The significance of a “yes” answer depends on the question asked. Two bits of information identifying one specific pair of nucleotides in an apple's DNA are much more important to future generations of apples than bits of information created by the thermal vibration of a carbon atom in one of the apple's molecules. Just a few molecules and their accompanying bits can convey the smell of an apple, but billions of billions of bits are needed to provide an apple with nutritional value.

“However,” Gell-Mann interjected again, “is there a mathematically rigorous way to determine the significance of a certain bit?”

I don't have a complete answer to this question, I said, still holding the apple in my hand. The significance of a bit of information depends on how that information is processed. All physical systems contain information. Moreover, dynamically developing over time, they transform and process this information. If an electron “here” contains a 0 and an electron “there” contains a 1, then when the electron moves from here to there, it changes the value of its bit. The natural dynamics of a physical system can be thought of as a computation in which a bit not only contains a 0 or a 1, but acts as an instruction: a 0 can mean “do this” and a 1 can mean “do that.” The significance of a bit depends not only on its value, but also on how that value affects other bits over time, as part of the constant processing of information that constitutes the dynamic evolution of the Universe.

I continued to describe the bits that make up the apple and began to talk about the role they play in the processes that give the apple its particular characteristics. Everything was going well. I covered the topic of “everything from the beat” and was even able to adequately answer questions from the audience. At least that's what I thought.

I finished the lecture and walked away from the board. Suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder. One of the listeners seriously decided to take possession of my apple. It was Doyne Farmer, one of the founders of chaos theory, a tall, athletic man. He grabbed my hands - he wanted me to drop the apple. Freeing myself from the grip, I pressed his back against the wall. The fractal images and photographs of Indians hanging on it fell to the floor. Farmer knocked me to the floor. We started rolling around on the floor, knocking over chairs. The apple has gone somewhere. It probably turned back into individual bits.

Part I
The big picture

Chapter 1
Introduction

This book is the history of the entire Universe and a single bit. The universe is the largest object in existence, and a bit is the smallest piece of information. The universe is made of bits. Every molecule, atom and elementary particle contains bits of information. In any interaction between these particles of the Universe, information is processed by changing these bits. In other words, the Universe is calculating. But it is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, so it calculates in a quantum mechanical way; its bits are quantum bits. Essentially, the history of the universe is a vast, ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computing machine.

This raises the question: what is the Universe calculating? Answer: yourself, your own behavior. As soon as the Universe came into existence, it immediately began to calculate. At first, the designs she created were simple: they involved elementary particles and established the fundamental laws of physics. Over time, as the Universe processed more and more information, it gave rise to increasingly intricate and complex objects, including galaxies, stars and planets. Life, language, people, society, culture - they all owe their existence to the natural ability of matter and energy to process information. The computational power of the universe explains one of nature's greatest mysteries: how complex systems, such as living things, arise from very simple laws of physics. These laws allow us to predict the future, but only as a probability and only in general terms. The quantum computing nature of the universe is such that the specific details of the future always remain unpredictable. Only a computer the size of the Universe itself could calculate them. So the only way to look into the future is to wait and see what happens.

Let me say a few words about myself. My first childhood memories are how we lived in a chicken coop. My father was an apprentice furniture maker and we lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The chicken coop was located at the far end of the owner's large barn. My father turned it into a two-room apartment; where the chickens used to live there were now sleeping places for me and my older brother. (My younger brother was allowed to make a cradle.) In the evening, my mother sang a lullaby to us, covered us with blankets and closed the wooden doors. We were left alone and looked at the world outside the window.

Here's my first memory: seeing paper burning in a wastebasket—a diamond-woven wire basket. Then I remember snuggling up to my mother's blue-jeaned leg, just above the knee, while my father flew a Japanese kite. Then the memories begin to quickly replace each other, as if on film. Each living creature perceives the world in its own way, notices many details and creates a certain structure from them. Nevertheless, we all live in the same space, we are governed by the same physical laws. At school I learned that the laws of physics that govern the universe are surprisingly simple. How can it be, I thought, that such a tangled and complex world that I see from my bedroom window arises from simple laws of physics? I decided to study this issue in detail and studied the laws of nature for many years.

Heinz Pagels, who died tragically in the mountains of Colorado in the summer of 1988, was a brilliant and original thinker. He believed that it was time for us to break the normal boundaries of science. He encouraged me to develop physically accurate methods for describing and measuring complexity. Later, under Murray Gell-Mann at Caltech, I studied how the laws of quantum mechanics and particle physics “program” the universe and in doing so sow the seeds of complexity.

I'm now a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But since I have no formal education in this field, it would be more correct to call me a professor of quantum mechanical engineering. It relies on quantum mechanics, a branch of physics that studies matter and energy at the micro level. Quantum mechanics is to atoms as classical mechanics is to mechanisms. In fact, you can call me an atomic engineer.

In 1993, I figured out how to build a quantum computer. Quantum computers are devices that harness the ability of individual atoms, photons and other elementary particles to process information. They calculate in a way that classic computers such as Macs and PCs cannot. As I learned how to make atoms and molecules—the smallest particles in the universe—compute, I became increasingly aware of the natural information-processing ability inherent in the universe itself. The complex world we see around us is a manifestation of the quantum computing of the Universe.

The digital revolution taking place today is the latest link in a long chain of revolutions in the field of information processing that goes back to the past. Among them are the emergence of human languages, sexual reproduction, the birth of life, and finally, the beginning of the Universe itself. Each one laid the foundation for the next, and all of these revolutions in information processing, since the Big Bang, occurred due to the natural ability of the Universe to process data.

Computing Universe with necessity creates complexity. Life, gender, the brain and human civilization did not arise by chance.

Quantum mechanics is famous for its paradoxes. Waves behave like particles and particles behave like waves, and you can be in two places at the same time. It is perhaps not so surprising that at the micro level things behave in strange and paradoxical ways; after all, we are accustomed to perceiving objects that are much larger in size than individual atoms. But the paradoxes of the quantum world still confuse us. Niels Bohr, the father of quantum mechanics, once remarked that if anyone thinks they can understand quantum mechanics without getting dizzy, then they really don't understand it.

Quantum computers use “quantum weirdness” to perform tasks too complex for conventional computers. A quantum bit, or “qubit,” can be in both the 0 and 1 states. at the same time, while a classical bit can only contain 0 or only 1. Therefore, a quantum computer can perform millions of calculations simultaneously.

Quantum computers process information stored in individual atoms, electrons and photons. A quantum computer is a democracy in the world of information: every atom, electron and photon equally participates in the processes of storing and processing information. And this fundamental democracy of information is not limited to quantum computers. All physical systems are fundamentally quantum mechanical, and all physical systems record, contain, and process information. The world is built from elementary particles - electrons, photons, quarks, and each elementary fragment of a physical system captures a piece of information: one particle - one bit. Interacting with each other, these fragments gradually transform and process information, bit by bit. Each collision of elementary particles acts as a simple logical operation, abbreviated as "op".

To understand any physical system in terms of its bits, you need to have a good understanding of the mechanism by which each element of that system records and processes information. If we figure out how a quantum computer does this, we will also know how a physical system does it.

The idea of ​​such a computer was proposed in the early 1980s. Paul Benev, Richard Feynman, David Deutsch and others. At the time, quantum computers were a purely abstract concept: no one knew how to build them. In the early 1990s, I showed how this could be done using existing experimental methods. Over the past ten years, I have worked with some of the world's best scientists and engineers to design, build and operate quantum computers.

There are many good reasons to build a quantum computer. First of all, we can do it. Quantum technologies - technologies for controlling matter at the atomic level - have undergone remarkable development in recent years. We now have fairly stable lasers, fairly precise manufacturing methods, and fast electronics that allow us to perform calculations at the atomic level.

The second reason is that we need to learn how to build quantum computers, at least if we want our computers to become faster and more powerful. For half a century, computer computing power has doubled every year and a half. This explosion is called "Moore's Law", after Gordon Moore, later a top executive at Intel, who pointed out the exponential nature of growth back in the 1960s. Moore's Law is not a law of nature, but a testament to human ingenuity. Every eighteen months computers become twice as fast because every eighteen months engineers find a way to halve the size of the connections and logic gates that make them up. Every time the size of a computer's core components is halved, it becomes possible to fit twice as many components on the same sized chip. As a result, the computer is twice as powerful as its predecessor, created a year and a half ago.

If we project Moore's Law into the future, we will see that the size of the connections and logic elements that make up computers will reach the level of atoms in about forty years; Therefore, if we want Moore's law to continue to apply, we will have to learn how to create computers that operate at the quantum level. Quantum computers represent the final frontier of miniaturization.

The quantum computers that my colleagues and I have made have already achieved this goal: each atom contains one bit. But today we can create very small quantum computers, both in size and in computing power. The largest general-purpose quantum computers currently in existence contain seven to ten quantum bits and can perform thousands of quantum logic operations per second. 1
In 2011, D-Wave Systems announced the creation of a commercial computer with 128 qubits. – Note ed.

. (For comparison, a typical desktop personal computer can contain trillions of bits and perform billions of ordinary, classical logical operations per second.) We have already learned how to make computers with elements the size of an atom, but we do not yet know how to make big computers with elements of this size. The first quantum computers appeared ten years ago, and the number of bits they can contain is doubling almost every two years. Even if this speed continues, it will be another forty years before quantum computers can match today's classical computers in terms of the number of bits. Quantum computers still have a long way to go to reach regular personal computers.

The third reason for building quantum computers is that they allow us to understand how the Universe records and processes information. One of the best ways to understand a law of nature is to create a machine that illustrates that law. Often we create the machine first, and the laws come later. The wheel and the top appeared many thousands of years before the law of conservation of angular momentum was discovered; a thrown stone - before Galileo discovered the laws of motion; prism and telescope - earlier than Newton's optical theory; The steam engine was invented long before James Watt designed his regulator, and Sadi Carnot discovered the second law of thermodynamics.

And since quantum mechanics is so difficult to understand, it would be great to create a machine that embodies its laws! By interacting with it, one could see in practice how quantum mechanics “works”; This is how a child playing with a top intuitively assimilates the concept and properties of angular momentum embodied in this toy. Only practical experience, the opportunity to observe with your own eyes how atoms behave, will allow you to truly understand what quantum mechanics is. The “toy” quantum computers we have learned to make today are machines that allow us to learn more and more about how physical systems capture and process information at the quantum mechanical level.

Finally, there is another reason to build quantum computers: they are very interesting. In the pages of this book we will meet some of the best scientists and engineers in the world. This is Caltech's Jeff Kimble, designer of the world's first photonic quantum logic gates; Dave Wineland of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who created the very first simple quantum computer; Hans Moey of Delft University of Technology, whose group performed some of the earliest demonstrations of quantum bits in superconducting circuits; David Corey of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who built the first molecular quantum computer and whose quantum analog computers can perform calculations that would require a conventional computer larger than the universe itself. Once we see how quantum computers work, we will be able to determine the limits of the computing power of the Universe.