For those local to Seattle, Seth Lloyd is in town tonight giving a Seattle Science Lecture:
Monday, May 8 at 7:30 pm.
Seth Lloyd: ‘Programming the Universe’
Seth Lloyd is a professor at MIT who works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing – using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He believes once humans have a complete understand the laws of physics, quantum computing will allow a complete understanding of the universe as well. His new book Programming the Universe explains how the creation of the universe involves information processing. His hypotheses bear implications for the evolution vs. intelligent design debate since he argues divine intervention isn’t necessary to produce complexity and life. Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street.
I attended the lecture. His point, I guess, is that quantum fluctuations provide randomness, and randomness acting on the laws of physics produces complexity.
The analogy was with monkeys typing at random on keyboards, creating random programs.
I wonder if Maxwell’s equations can be written as a program for a Turing machine and how many bits long it would be.
I vaguely remember reading sometime ago about the low entropy of the early universe being something of an unsolved problem in cosmology. I think it would be a problem here, too.