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New quantum simulation tries to explain the death of the universe
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
- T. S. Elliot, The Hollow Men, 1925.
Today I’m writing about death. Depressing, I know, but not your death or my death. Rather, I want to talk about the death of the universe.
Recently a group of scientists attempted to see what the death of the universe might look like using a 5564-qubit quantum computer, and it didn’t look at all like the mainstream predictions. Quantum mechanics, it turns out, might ensure the universe dies a far more violent death than the standard clock-winding-down arguments of thermodynamics.
The standard thermodynamic argument is a bit depressing honestly.
A young woman once called Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer. How she got his number, I’m not sure, but she was crying over the phone. He recounts in his autobiography how he asked her what the matter was, and she told him that she was crying about a book he wrote. He wondered what he could have written that got her so upset. While he had written a few tear-jerking short stories, his books, for the most part, were pretty unemotional. She explained to him that it was a non-fiction book he had written about the universe…
