Music of the Spheres

The real power of quantum computing is NOT the ability to crack security codes or to search huge databases at blinding speeds, the real power of quantum computing lies in simulating reality.

"The physicists of the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck have come considerably closer to their goal to investigate complex phenomena in a model system: They have realized a digital, and therefore, universal quantum simulator in their laboratory, which can, in principle, simulate any physical system efficiently."

Back in 2008, Seth Lloyd, in his eloquent book Programming The Universe, stated the underlying reason why the scientists at Innsbruck were able to do something which, in time, could change the future of man in ways impossible to comprehend.

"Quantum computers process the information stored on individual atoms, electrons, and photons. A quantum computer is a democracy of information: every atom, electron, and photon participates equally in registering and processing information. And this fundamental democracy of information is not confined to quantum computers. All physical systems are at bottom quantum-mechanical, and all physical systems register and process information."

In indirect fashion, The Music of the Spheres seems apropos as man begins to tease information out of reality using photons and atoms just as the ancients used the motion of celestial bodies to tease out harmonic and relational aspects of nature using music as the mechanism to make it happen.