Does the underlying physics of a living system change its properties in
a qualitative way? Could a different physics permit entirely new types
of life? The Quantum Coreworld is an abstract world inhabited by
assembly language programs; this language—an extended version of
Corewar's Redcode—permits programs to use quantum operations on quantum bits (qubits).
The aim of the Quantum Coreworld project is to engineer, or discover, toy
quantum lifeforms. The success of such organisms—at exploiting available
resources before competitors or at cooperating with genetically identical
friends—must depend on their use of quantum operations. If this endeavor
required delicate control of large quantum systems, there would be no way to get
started with current technology. As it happens, however, interesting quantum
operations can be simulated on an ordinary digital computer.
The Quantum Coreworld gets its name from the game Corewar and the first
Corewar-like artificial world of Rasmussen, Knudsen, Feldberg, and Hindsholm
(1990). The Quantum Coreworld ecology is run 24x7 on participating Internet
servers at http://science.fiction.org. The software, pQmars, used to run the
ecology and to develop and debug new lifeforms is available under the GPL
license.
Aims of the Tutorial
In this session the audience will be introduced to: the biological desiderata
used to design the Quantum Coreworld, the details of its artificial chemistry,
the quantum mechanical operations available in the chemistry, the organization
of coreworlds into an Internet accessible ecology and some experimental
demonstrations that the world "works".
Although a half-day tutorial is inadequate to provide a hands on
demonstration of writing quantum Redcode replicators or hitchhikers, the session
is intended to provoke extensive audience participation. The Quantum Coreworld
is a specific example of the world as it might be, this tutorial is a tour of
one attempt at probing the physical and computational limits of (artificial)
living systems.
Target Audience
The Quantum Coreworld project is necessarily highly multidisciplinary;
the target audience includes physicists, biologists and computer scientists as
well as free software and Corewar hobbyists. No prior knowledge of quantum
mechanics, quantum computing, artificial chemistries or assembler automata is
assumed.
