Lloyd, Seth

Seth is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and principal investigator at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (director, Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory). He is interested in how systems of all kinds -- computers, atoms, brains, cells, societies, and the universe as a whole -- process information. He has done important work on the tricky but essential problem of scientifically defining "complexity," which is relevant to understanding all those systems. He is a leading pioneer in the field of quantum computation and quantum communications — he proposed the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, which involves harnessing the bizarre, counterintuitive properties of matter at the atomic scale to create, someday, a dazzling new class of computer. He is the author of Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos, which asks what if the entire universe were a computer? In his book, Seth contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program. Once we understand the laws of physics completely, he contends, we will be able to use small-scale quantum computing to understand the universe completely as well. He speculates that if computational power continues to increase according to Moore’s Law (doubling every 18 months or so), we could have the whole universe simulated in a computer in about 600 years. However, he shows that in a finite universe there are limits to exponential growth, and that it is very unlikely that Moore’s Law will be maintained indefinitely. Seth has been widely featured in the mainstream media for his innovative work and ideas.