Universe may be part of a giant quantum computer

A pair of physicists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Russia recently proposed an entirely new view of the cosmos. Their research takes the wacky idea that weâre living in a computer simulation and mashes it up with the mind-boggling âmany worldsâ theory to say that, essentially, our entire universe is part of an immeasurably large quantum system spanning âuncountableâ multiverses.
When you think about quantum systems, like IBM and Googleâs quantum computers, we usually imagine a device thatâs designed to work with subatomic particles â qubits â to perform quantum calculations.
These computers may one day perform advanced calculations that classical computers today canât, but for now theyâre useful as a way to research the gap between classical and quantum reality.
Artyam Yurov and Valerian Yurov, the IKBFU researchers behind the aforementioned study, posit that everything in the universe, including the universe itself, should be viewed as a quantum object. This means, to experience âquantum realityâ we donât need to look at subatomic particles or qubits: weâre already there. Everything is quantum!
The paper goes on to mathematically describe how our entire universe is, itself, a quantum object. This means, like a tiny subatomic particle, it exhibits quantum properties that should include superposition. Theoretically, our universe should be able to be in more than one place or state at a time, and that means there simply must be something out there for it to interact with â even if that means it uses jaw-droppingly unintuitive quantum mechanics to interact with itself in multiple states simultaneously.
The problem with expanding quantum mechanics to large objects â like say, a single cell â is that other theoretical quantum features stop making as much sense. In this case âdecoherence,â or how quantum objects âcollapseâ from multiple states into the physical state we see in our classical observations, doesnât seem to pass muster at the cosmic scale.
Yurov and Yurov have a simple solution for that: They state unequivocally in their work that âThere is no such thing as âdecoherenceâ.â
But, the more Yurov and Yurov explored the âmany interacting worldsâ (MIW) theory that says all quantum functions manifest physically in alternate realities (the cat is dead on one world, alive on another, and dancing the Cha Cha on another, etc.), the more they realized it not only makes sense, but the math and science seem to work out better if you assume everything, the universe included, has quantum features.
The researchers then used their assumptions to come up with calculations that expand the âmany worldsâ theory to encompass multiple universes, or multiverses. The big idea here is that, if the universe is a quantum object it must interact with something and that something is probably other universes.
But what the research doesnât explain, is why our universe and everything in it would exist as something analogous to a single qubit in a gigantic quantum computer spanning multiple universes simultaneously. If humans arenât the magical observers who cause the quantum universe to âcollapseâ into classical reality by measuring it, we might instead be cogs in the machine â maybe the universe is a qubit, maybe weâre the qubits. Perhaps weâre just noise that the universes ignore while they go about their calculations.
Maybe we do live in a computer simulation after all. But instead of being some advanced creatureâs favorite NPCs, weâre just bits of math that help the operating system run.