Roger Penrose: Forward to "A Computable Universe"

Foreword to A Computable Universe: Understanding Computation & Exploring Nature As Computation
  by Roger Penrose
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, UK

A disappearing physicist, and a discovery that may lead to understanding dark matter and a real quantum computer

Kurzweilai.net has an article on the possible recent discovery of “Majorana fermions” — particles that "would be right on the border between matter and antimatter."

Some theories even suggest that these particles may ultimately provide the explanation for Dark Matter. Also, the article suggests that "Majorana fermions could be fundamental building blocks for a future quantum computer that would be exceptionally stable and barely sensitive to external influences. This would avoid the central problem with all current quantum computers: the dreaded decoherence."

The Kurzweilai.net article is based on this paper published last week in Science Express.

This video summarizes the experiment leading to the discovery:

"Quantum Mechanics Implies that the Universe is a Computer Simulation"

A Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

This paper surveys evidence and arguments for the proposition that the universe as we know it is not a physical, material world but a computer-generated simulation -- a kind of virtual reality. The evidence is drawn from the observations of natural phenomena in the realm of quantum mechanics. The arguments are drawn from philosophy and from the results of experiment. While the experiments discussed are not conclusive in this regard, they are found to be consistent with a computer model of the universe. Six categories of quantum puzzles are examined: quantum waves, the measurement effect (including the uncertainty principle), the equivalence of quantum units, discontinuity, non-locality, and the overall relationship of natural phenomena to the mathematical formalism. Many of the phenomena observed in the laboratory are puzzling because they are difficult to conceptualize as physical phenomena, yet they can be modeled exactly by mathematical manipulations. When we analogize to the operations of a digital computer, these same phenomena can be understood as logical and, in some cases, necessary features of computer programming designed to produce a virtual reality simulation for the benefit of the user.

Decoding Reality: The Universe is a Quantum Computer

Seth Lloyd reviews Vlatko Vedral's new book Decoding Reality, which asserts that everything is at its most fundamental quantum information, and the universe is a quantum computer.

Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer

Old paper by David Deutsch, describes why a quantum computer performing certain functions would essentially prove the MWI of quantum physics

I have described elsewhere (Deutsch 1985; cf. also Albert 1983) how it would be possible to make a crucial experimental test of the Everett (‘many-universes’) interpretation of quantum theory by using a quantum computer (thus contradicting the widely held belief that it is not experimentally distinguishable from other interpretations). However, the performance of such experiments must await both the construction of quantum computers and the development of true artificial intelligence programs. In explaining the operation of quantum computers I have, where necessary, assumed Everett’s ontology. Of course the explanations could always be ‘translated’ into the conventional interpretation, but not without entirely losing their explanatory power. Suppose, for example, a quantum computer were programmed as in the Stock Exchange problem described. Each day it is given different data. The Everett interpretation explains well how the computer’s behaviour follows from its having delegated subtasks to copies of itself in other universes. On the days when the computer succeeds in performing two processor-days of computation, how would the conventional interpretations explain the presence of the correct answer? Where was it computed?

David Deutsch - Quantum Constructor Theory

Deutsch explains how a quantum theory of computation is fundamental to our understanding of reality, however it does not capture the whole of physics. Therefore a full understanding and future theories of everything will have to fall under the larger umbrella of a constructor theory which should provide a true theory of everything.

Quantum Constructor theory