Related papers: Computational and Biological Analogies for Underst…
Life is confronted with computation problems in a variety of domains including animal behavior, single-cell behavior, and embryonic development. Yet we currently do not know of a naturally existing biological system that is capable of…
Enhanced sampling algorithms have emerged as powerful methods to extend the utility of molecular dynamics simulations and allow the sampling of larger portions of the configuration space of complex systems in a given amount of simulation…
Involving only the measurements of commuting observables - the problem-setting and the corresponding solution - quantum algorithms should be subject to classical logic. This would allow flanking their customary quantum description with a…
We propose a new dark energy model for solving the cosmological fine-tuning and coincidence problems. A default assumption is that the fine-tuning problem disappears if we do not interpret dark energy as vacuum energy. The key idea to…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
For almost a century, the cosmological constant has been a mysterious object, in relation to both its origin and its very small value. By using a Bose-Einstein condensate analogue model for gravitational dynamics, we address here the…
Artificial organisms are computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. How do these lifelike information-processing behaviours could arise in diverse far-from-equilibrium physical systems remains an open question. Here,…
This philosophical paper explores the relation between modern scientific simulations and the future of the universe. We argue that a simulation of an entire universe will result from future scientific activity. This requires us to tackle…
The paper deals with the scale discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy in cosmology and the theoretical quantum vacuum energy (cosmological constant problem). Here, we demonstrate that Einstein's equation and an analogy to particle…
In cosmology, we would like to explain our observations and predict future observations from theories of the entire universe. Such cosmological theories make ontological assumptions of what entities exist and what their properties and…
Physics relies on mathematical spaces carefully matched to the phenomena under study. Phase space in classical mechanics, Hilbert space in quantum theory, configuration spaces in field theory all provide representations in which physical…
Computational methods are the most effective tools we have besides scientific experiments to explore the properties of complex biological systems. Progress is slowing because digital silicon computers have reached their limits in terms of…
A cellular automaton is a deterministic and exactly computable dynamical system which mimics certain fundamental aspects of physical dynamics such as spatial locality and finite entropy. CA systems can be constructed which have additional…
We introduce a dynamical model to reduce a large cosmological constant to a sufficiently small value. The basic ingredient in this model is a distinction which has been made between the two unit systems used in cosmology and particle…
Many extensions of the Standard Model predict large numbers of additional unstable particles whose decays in the early universe are tightly constrained by observational data. For example, the decays of such particles can alter the ratios of…
Our understanding of the physics of biological molecules, such as proteins and DNA, is limited because the approximations we usually apply to model inert materials are not in general applicable to soft, chemically inhomogeneous systems. The…
At the intersection of what I call uncomputable art and computational epistemology, a form of experimental philosophy, we find an exciting and promising area of science related to causation with an alternative, possibly best possible,…
The rapidly increasing interest in the quantum properties of living matter stimulates a discussion of the fundamental properties of life as well as quantum mechanics. In this discussion often concepts are used that originate in philosophy…
I try to revive, and possibly reconcile, a debate started a few years ago, about the relative roles of a bare cosmological constant and of a vacuum energy, by taking the attitude to try to get the most from the physics now available as…
In 2011, I published a popular-level book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us. It investigated a common claim found in contemporary religious literature that the parameters of physics and cosmology are so…