Computational capacity of the universe

The universe as quantum computer

This article reviews the history of digital computation, and investigates just how far the concept of computation can be taken. In particular, I address the question of whether the universe itself is in fact a giant computer, and if so, just what kind of computer it is. I will show that the universe can be regarded as a giant quantum computer. The quantum computational model of the universe explains a variety of observed phenomena not encompassed by the ordinary laws of physics. In particular, the model shows that the the quantum computational universe automatically gives rise to a mix of rand…

A Computational Model for Quantum Measurement

Is the dynamical evolution of physical systems objectively a manifestation of information processing by the universe? We find that an affirmative answer has important consequences for the measurement problem. In particular, we calculate the amount of quantum information processing involved in the evolution of physical systems, assuming a finite degree of fine-graining of Hilbert space. This assumption is shown to imply that there is a finite capacity to sustain the immense entanglement that measurement entails. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the system's unitary evolution becomes computati…

Characterizing the transition from classical to quantum as an irreversible loss of physical information

The experimental confirmation of Landauer principle and the emerging concept of a computational universe make it more and more crucial to understand the physical sense of information, as it has an intrinsic relation with observer knowledge that is often rejected as subjective. In this paper we propose an objective definition of phase information in a purely classical computational universe with quantized phase states, this quantization being imposed by our fundamental hypothesis that physical information has a finite and limited density, responsible for the irreversibility. We use a statistica…

Information carrying capacity of a cosmological constant

We analyze the exchange of information in different cosmological backgrounds when sender and receiver are timelike separated and communicate through massless fields (without the exchange of light-signals). Remarkably, we show that the dominance of a cosmological constant makes the amount of recoverable information imprinted in the field by the sender extremely resilient: it does not decay in time or with the spatial separation of sender and receiver, and it actually increases with the rate of expansion of the Universe. This is in stark contrast with the information carried by conventional ligh…

Was inflation necessary for the existence of time?

Modern physics has unlocked a number of mysteries regarding the early Universe, such as the baryogenesis, the unification of the strong and electroweak forces and the nucleosynthesis. However, understanding the very early Universe, close to the Planck epoch, still presents a major challenge. The theory of inflation, which is assumed to have taken place towards the end of the very early Universe, has been introduced in order to solve a number of cosmological problems. However, concrete observational evidence for inflation is still outstanding and the physical mechanisms behind inflation remain …

通过核方法高效且可靠地测量动力系统中的信息处理容量

Efficiently and Reliably Measuring Information Processing Capacity in Dynamical Systems via Kernels

本文提出核信息处理容量（KIPC）框架，利用核方法高效计算动力系统的总信息处理容量，避免基函数枚举和阶数截断，并验证其在回声状态网络和量子储层计算中的有效性。

The Universe is not a Computer

When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, and then map the time-evolved result back to real-world predictions. But while this computational process can tell us what we want to know, we have taken this procedure too literally, implicitly assuming that the universe must compute itself in the same manner. Physical theories that do not follow this computational framework are deemed illogical, right from the start. But this anthropocentric assu…