Emergence ... for real

Artificial life now lives in a quantum computer with many of the same characteristics of the original as seen by It's Alive!, a blurb from Digital Trends.

The work was achieved by researchers from the University of the Basque Country in Spain. With the aid of an IBM QX4 quantum computer, they created tiny simulated life forms capable of carrying out many of the behaviors seen in real-world life forms — including reproduction, mutation, evolution, and death. They hope that doing so will help researchers to better understand the origins of life and whether it can be explained through quantum mechanics. This is something that has been hypothesized for decades, dating back to Erwin Schrödinger’s influential 1944 book What is Life?

Both James D. Watson,[2] and Francis Crick, who jointly proposed the double helix structure of DNA based on X-ray diffraction experiments by Rosalind Franklin, credited Schrödinger's book with presenting an early theoretical description of how the storage of genetic information would work, and each independently acknowledged the book as a source of inspiration for their initial researches.[3]

Conway's game of life writ large without question.

The Rules

For a space that is 'populated':

• Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by solitude.
• Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
• Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.

For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated'

• Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

Any questions?