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Programming the Universe

Illustration of the universe and a computer keyboard
Credit: Courtesy of Boris Kulikov

Presenter:
Seth Lloyd
Director, Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

What is the universe made of? The conventional view states that it is made up of matter and energy, of fields and elementary particles. But there is a more fundamental view: the universe is made up of information, and at the bottom, it is made up of bits. Drawing from recently developed theories of quantum computation, we show how information and information processing form and shape the universe, from its smallest to its largest scales.

Anyone outside NIST wishing to attend must be sponsored by a NIST employee and receive a visitor badge. For more information, call Kum J. Ham at 301-975-4203.

Colloquia are videotaped and available in the NIST Research Library.

Created October 22, 2009, Updated November 15, 2019