The universe can be used as a super-powerful computing device capable of finding answers to super-complex problems millions of times faster than a hypothetical quantum computer made of an equally large number of atoms, according to mathematicians in an article in the journal Physical Review D.
“Today we believe that quantum computers will eventually replace modern electronic supercomputers. We thought about another question - whether humanity can create something even more powerful, using black holes and the postulates of quantum field theory, - said Stephen Jordan (Stephen Jordan) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA).
In recent years, mankind has begun to face the fact that many computational problems cannot be solved with the help of modern supercomputers, even for a time comparable to the lifetime of the Universe. These include both purely scientific problems - calculating the expansion rate of the universe or disclosing the three-dimensional shape of complex molecules, and many practical problems, such as the distribution of traffic flows or the optimization of the economy.
Many of these problems can be solved using two relatively new approaches to computing - using neural networks and quantum computers. The former can “filter out” unnecessary data and significantly reduce the amount of processed information, while the power of the latter grows exponentially as the number of their elements increases.
According to Jordan, the creation of the first "large" quantum computers, consisting of several dozen qubits, made physicists and mathematicians wonder how big such machines can be made. In principle, as the scientist notes, nothing prevents the creation of a quantum computer that includes all the atoms of the Universe. The question arises - how limitless will its possibilities be?
Even such a machine, as the calculations of Jordan and his colleagues show, will not be omnipotent - for example, the exact determination of the so-called cosmological constant, the energy density of the vacuum, a key parameter of the theory of relativity and modern cosmology, will take longer than the entire universe exists.
This fact puts cosmologists before an "insoluble" question - why the Universe exists and why space has the same properties at all its points, and how it is possible to determine how many dimensions exist in it and what values of the cosmological constant are characteristic of each of them. If the Universe could not "solve" this problem, then it would have inhomogeneous properties, which is not observed in reality.
According to American mathematicians, the answer to this riddle can be obtained if we consider the entire Universe as a kind of "Einstein's" computer capable of calculating how the universe behaves in accordance with the principles of the theory of relativity and quantum field theory. In other words, the Universe must be able to "calculate" itself in order to exist in the form in which we observe it today.
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Using a similar idea, scientists have created an algorithm that calculates the values of the cosmological constant with an accuracy of 120 zeros after the decimal point in just an hour using a quantum computer, using data collected by telescopes and other scientific instruments when observing various types of fields that exist in the universe.
In a similar way, according to Jordan and his colleagues, it is possible to solve other mathematical and statistical problems that are beyond the power of quantum computers, concerning not only the history of the birth of the universe, but also more ordinary problems, including those of a cryptographic nature.