Researchers first created a life simulator on a quantum computer

"Our research brought these amazing and complex events, called life, to the microscopic world of atoms - and it worked."

An international team of researchers for the first time used a quantum computer to create artificial life - a simulation of living organisms, which scientists can use to understand life at the population level and below, up to cell-cell interactions.

On a quantum computer, individual living organisms, represented at the microscopic level with the help of superconducting qubits , forced to "mate", interact with the environment and "die", simulating the most important of the factors influencing evolution.
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The new study , published in the journal Scientific Reports, was a breakthrough that may eventually help to answer the question of whether the origin of life can be explained by quantum mechanics - a physical theory that describes the Universe in terms of interactions between subatomic particles.

Simulation of quantum artificial life is a new approach to one of the most disturbing scientific questions: how does life come from inert matter , from the “ primary broth ” of organic molecules that once existed on Earth?

For the first time, the idea that the answer might be in the quantum field was suggested in 1944 by Erwin Schrödinger in his influential book, What Is Life ?. But progress in this area was hampered by the difficulties with the creation of powerful quantum computers, which were required for carrying out simulations that could answer this question.

Ordinary, “classic” computers, one of which you use to read this article, process information in the form of binary bits — units of information, the value of which can take the value 0 or 1. Unlike them, quantum computers use qubits, the value of which can represent is a combination of 0 and 1. Such a property, a superposition, means that the power of large-scale quantum computers will seriously exceed the power of classical ones.

The goal of the team of researchers from the Basque Science Foundation, who worked under the guidance of Enrique Solano, was to create a computer model that reproduces the processes of Darwinian evolution on a quantum computer. To do this, the researchers used a five-qubit quantum processor developed by IBM , which can be accessed by cloud technology.

This quantum algorithm simulated basic biological processes, such as self-reproduction, mutations, interaction between individuals and death, at the level of qubits. The result was an accurate simulation of the evolutionary process taking place at the microscopic level.

“Life is a complex macroscopic feature arising from inanimate matter, and quantum information is a feature of qubits, microscopic isolated objects, occurring in a very small universe,” Solano told me by mail. “Our research transferred these amazing and complex events, called life, to the microscopic world of atoms - and it worked.”

Individuals were represented in the model using two qubits. One qubit was a separate genotype, the genetic code behind a certain feature, and the other was a phenotype, a physical expression of this feature.

To simulate self-reproduction, the algorithm copied the expectation (the average probability of the results of all possible measurements) of the genotype into a new qubit using entanglement , a process linking the qubits together so that they instantly exchange information. To account for mutations, the researchers inserted random turns of qubits into the code of the algorithm, and applied it to the qubits of the genotype.

The algorithm then modeled the interaction between individuals and their environment, representing aging and death. This was done by transferring a new genotype from the self-reproduction step to another qubit using entanglement. The new qubit represented the phenotype of the individual. The lifetime of an individual - how long it takes information to degrade or dissipate in the process of interaction with the environment - depends on the information encoded in the genotype.

Finally, these individuals interacted with each other. This required four qubits (two genotypes and two phenotypes), but the phenotypes interacted and exchanged information only if they met certain criteria encoded in their genotypic qubits.

The interaction produced a new individual, and the process was repeated again. In sum, the researchers repeated this process more than 24,000 times.

“Our quantum individuals acted under the influence of attempts at adaptation within the framework of Darwinian quantum evolution, which, in fact, transmitted quantum information through generations of larger multi-qubit entangled states,” the researchers wrote.

Now that the work of the quantum artificial life algorithm has been demonstrated, the next step will be to scale it to work with a large number of individuals and expand their abilities. For example, Solano told me that they and their colleagues are working on the possibility of adding “sexual characteristics” to qubits in order to study social and sexual interactions at a quantum level.

“We may find that it is better - two sexes, or perhaps none, for the good of the species, its survival and development,” said Solano.

In addition, Solano said that they and their colleagues want to increase the number of interactions that occur between individuals in the simulation. But it depends on the capabilities of the computer equipment itself.

Although quantum computing has advanced greatly in recent codes, they still have a long way to go - mainly because of the capricious nature of qubits. They are incredibly sensitive to noise; they can be realized only within the framework of complex and expensive systems capable of shielding them from external influences, and this usually means the presence of many lasers, exotic materials and extremely low temperatures.

But even after all these tricks, forcing several dozen qubits to work together is a difficult task. This year, Google has already set a record with a processor of 72 qubits , but this is still very far from the true quantum superiority, the theoretical point at which quantum computers can beat the most powerful of the classical computers of the Earth.

And although the computer technologies necessary to achieve quantum supremacy have not yet appeared, the work of Solano and his colleagues can in principle lead to the appearance of quantum computers capable of autonomously simulating evolution without first asking them an algorithm written by humans.