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  • ESSAY

Could the Universe be a giant quantum computer?

Computational rules might describe the evolution of the cosmos better than the dynamical equations of physics — but only if they are given a quantum twist.
By
  1. David L. Chandler

    1. David L. Chandler is a science writer based in Massachusetts.

The death of US computer scientist and physicist Edward Fredkin this June went largely unnoticed, except for a belated obituary in the New York Times. Yet despite never quite becoming the household name that some of his contemporaries did, Fredkin had an outsized influence on both of the disciplines that he straddled.

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Nature 620, 943-945 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02646-x

References

  1. Fredkin, E. & Toffoli, T. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 219–253 (1982).

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  2. Lloyd, S. Science 261, 1569–1571 (1993).

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  3. Fredkin, E. Phys. D: Nonlinear Phenom. 45, 254–270 (1990).

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  4. Lloyd, S. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4455 (2013).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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