SNAP

[adelaidesean]

In last week's issue of New Scientist, Jeff Hecht reviewed a book on the ongoing dialogue between science and fiction.

And now this:

"...nature employed a quantum trick to speed up the process of sorting through and discarding unwanted structures--the same trick quantum computers employ... If many different chemical structures could exist simultaneously in multiple configurations, they could essentially 'test' a range of possibilities at once until they hit a self-replicating molecule."
New Scientist, 8 December 2007

Compare:

"...the early universe functioned as a quantum computer, existing as a combination of near-infinite but slightly different versions of itself, all overlapped. Under such conditions, the chances of molecules and atoms combining in just the right way to kick-start self-replication are greatly increased."
Orphans of Earth, 2003

New Scientist first reported this idea in June 2002. I wrote them an email later that month, which they published under the banner "We got there first." The latest research goes in a slightly different direction to our original idea, but I'm pleased that someone's still pursuing it, and that the dialogue between the real and the speculative is still going strong.

Comments

Re: When The Raccoons Rule The Earth

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

I see your giant raccoons and raise them an army of uplifted marsupials. :-)

Just sent you an email. I hope it gets through...