Scientists Used Quantum Computing to Simulate Artificial Life

Scientists Used Quantum Computing to Simulate Artificial Life

A group of scientists just modeled life using quantum computing in order to answer questions about how our existence supposedly came about from inert subatomic particles and basic organic molecules.

Their success, which some compared to “playing Sims on a whole new level of physics,” leads one to question whether we’re getting closer to proving the simulation hypothesis – by creating our own artificial simulations of life, will we find we’re living in a complex simulation ourselves?

Their quantum model of artificial life proved successful at a basic level, encouraging the team to continue their study with more variables in the future.

Using an IBM QX4 quantum computer, the team coded units of artificial life with qubits – the quantum bits that can exist as both 1s and 0s simultaneously in an entangled state. One qubit represented a living organism’s genotype, the genetic code for a certain trait, and another qubit represented phenotype, the physical expression of a certain trait. They then added random changes in the rotation of the quantum state of these qubits to simulate genetic mutation.

Those particles were then automated to reproduce, mutate, evolve, and die, in order to simulate life and evolution.

“The goal of the proposed model is to reproduce the characteristic processes of Darwinian evolution, adapted to the language of quantum algorithms and quantum computing,” said the researchers’ paper published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

The results were interesting in that a quantum explanation for explaining the mechanism behind evolution matched many theoretical predictions, corroborating ideas proposed by quantum theory’s forefathers, i.e. Schrödinger, Pauli, and Von Neumann.

But while their goal was to artificially simulate life from the most basic particles first thought to exist in a “primordial soup,” the experiment remained far from answering the deeper existential questions about our existence, including what brought those particles and molecules into existence in the first place. Or how the interaction between these particles led us to become highly sentient life forms.

Quantum computing is advancing quickly, however the technology hasn’t quite developed to a practical level where it can be implemented effectively. Quantum computer processors are highly volatile requiring a sensitive atmosphere, high-powered lasers, and extreme temperatures to maintain stability. Variables as simple as loud noises can upset quantum states, causing particles to decohere.

So far, Google says it has achieved 72-bit processing with a quantum chip, though developing a processor to achieve “quantum supremacy” – a quantum computer able to outperform the world’s fastest binary computer – has yet to be achieved in a consistent manner.

 

 

For more on the nature of quantum physics and consciousness, watch this episode of Inspirations with New York Time Bestselling author Eben Alexander:



These Near-Death Experiences Describe Direct Experiences With God

These Near-Death Experiences Describe Direct Experiences With God

What do near-death experiences suggest about the ultimate source of reality, spirituality, and what many call “God?” Psychiatrist Raymond Moody explains the answer to this question in his latest book “God Is Bigger Than the Bible.”

Dr. Raymond Moody has spent more than four decades studying the afterlife. In his 1975 book “Life After Life” he first presented his research on the “near-death experience” or NDE, the transcendent experience of death that radically transforms the life of the person who lives to tell about it. In his new book, Dr. Moody presents his thoughts on God, drawn from the accounts of the thousands of people he has interviewed about their near-death experiences.

“You know, when I was a kid I didn’t think about God. I can’t say I was an atheist because I never really thought about God,” Dr. Moody said. “Then I went to college and got interested in these near-death experiences through Plato, and subsequently have heard of thousands of these from people all over the world who have this same kind of experience—many of them have conversations with God. So that is how I came to God, you know God has become just a big part of my life in the last few decades.”

Dr. Moody’s motivation for writing his latest book is to provide readers with an understanding of God, or source, that is entirely outside the realm of organized religion. To Dr. Moody, idealized religion can present a fearsome image of God that has scared many away from developing a personal relationship with the divine.

“Well, before I started hearing of people with near-death experiences, my notion of God was that people had this imaginary figure who was watching their every step with a little book, trying to see if they’re going to stumble or something,” Dr. Moody said. “But when I started hearing these people with near-death experiences it was a whole different take on God. People say that when they had their cardiac arrest or whatever, that they left their bodies and dissolved into this light, almost. People say that whatever kind of love that you have experienced while you’re alive, that is just beyond description. You go through a passageway to this light of complete comfort, peace, and love, you feel sort of wrapped up in it.”

A common component of the NDE is what is known as the “life review.

“People say they’re surrounded by a holographic panorama consisting of everything they’ve ever done, and they witness it from the point of view of the other people they’ve interacted with. And all of this is being experienced in the presence of a being of complete compassion and love, who sees all those things they’ve done there, but there’s no judgment coming from this—that this being is helping you evaluate these things. They say that there are no words but that the thought comes through. The question that comes from this being is ‘how have you learned to love?’ People learn a lot about themselves from these encounters with God,” Dr. Moody said.

Through his research, both with near-death experiencers and the elderly, Dr. Moody has come to an understanding of God as the writer of our life stories.

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