I presented the "Quantum Coreworld" at the Ninth International
Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (A-Life
9). See: http://non.fiction.org/~await/alife9
They had wireless Internet at the conference so I was able to upload a
program to http://science.fiction.org and the little gnu appeared and
the "ecology" started computing the result. Cute. My old supervisor--
Gilles Brassard--flew in from Montreal just for my tutorial. Charles
Ofria--well known for his work on digital evolution--was also in
attendance. Several people offered me spare CPU cycles so there is now
a greater need for Mac OS-X and Windows binaries of the pQmars software.
Although the Quantum Coreworld remains science-fiction, around the world
there are serious efforts to build bio-molecular quantum computers:
Bio-molecular Quantum Computation
Dr. J.H. Reina*, Dr. S.C. Benjamin, Professor G.A.D. Briggs, Dr.
B.W. Lovett, A. Nazir
This study aims at implementing the use of the resonant transfer
of excitons in complex bio-molecular systems (e.g., the purple
bacteria Rhodospirillum molischianum) for quantum computing
purposes. We have performed some calculations that support the
feasibility of such an approach, but this study is still in
progress and needs further exploration.(*Clarendon Laboratory,
Department of Physics) (Funded by EPSRC Foresight LINK Project,
DTI, Hitachi Europe and The Royal Society) (In collaboration
with Hewlett Packard Laboratories Bristol).
See also: Herek JL, Wohlleben W, Cogdell RJ, Zeidler D, Motzkus
M. (2002) Quantum control of energy flow in light harvesting.
Nature 417:533-535. http://www.furl.net/item.jsp?id=685890
Obviously we don't know if bio-molecular quantum computers are possible;
that's what Reina et al are trying to find out. And we don't know if
information processing of large quantum states is possible; that's what
the NSA is trying to find out. There is still some practical use for the
Quantum Coreworld: before Nature could build a large bio-molecular
quantum processor, there must be a selective advantage for small quantum
processors. My thesis is:
information processing of quantum states--that can be
simulated on a classical digital computer--will provide
a selective advantage in an abstract, "natural" ecology.
Proving the thesis rests on the definition of "natural". For certain
computational problems it has already been proved that quantum
information processing offers an advantage. With the help of people
uploading programs, donating CPU cycles or contributing to the GPLed
code-base this artificial ecology can indeed become very "natural".
Please help out!
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GnuPG (ID 4153C516) 1716 E850 1CE6 6F34 B8B7 50D8 B108 EDF2 4153 C516
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