{"id":210018,"date":"2025-03-29T09:12:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/physicist-revisits-the-computational-limits-of-life-and-schrodingers-essential-question-in-the-era-of-quantum-computing"},"modified":"2025-03-29T09:12:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T14:12:39","slug":"physicist-revisits-the-computational-limits-of-life-and-schrodingers-essential-question-in-the-era-of-quantum-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/physicist-revisits-the-computational-limits-of-life-and-schrodingers-essential-question-in-the-era-of-quantum-computing","title":{"rendered":"Physicist revisits the computational limits of life and Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s essential question in the era of quantum computing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicist-revisits-the-computational-limits-of-life-and-schrodingers-essential-question-in-the-era-of-quantum-computing.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More than 80 years ago, Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, a theoretical physicist steeped in the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the Upanishads, delivered a series of public lectures at Trinity College, Dublin, which eventually came to be published in 1944 under the title \u201cWhat is Life?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, in the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, Philip Kurian, a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/theoretical+physicist\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">theoretical physicist<\/a> and founding director of the Quantum Biology Laboratory (QBL) at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has used the laws of quantum mechanics, which Schr\u00f6dinger postulated, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-04-quantum-fiber-optics-brain-degenerative.html\">QBL\u2019s discovery of cytoskeletal filaments exhibiting quantum optical features<\/a>, to set a drastically revised upper bound on the computational capacity of carbon-based life in the entire history of Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Published in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/sciadv.adt4623\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science Advances<\/i><\/a>, Kurian\u2019s latest work conjectures a relationship between this information-processing limit and that of all matter in the observable universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 80 years ago, Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, a theoretical physicist steeped in the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the Upanishads, delivered a series of public lectures at Trinity College, Dublin, which eventually came to be published in 1944 under the title \u201cWhat is Life?\u201d Now, in the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, Philip [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,1523,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-computing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}