The holographic principle is a property of string theories and a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region – such as a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string theoretic interpretation by Leonard Susskind, who combined his ideas with previous ones of 't Hooft and Charles Thorn. Susskind said, "The three-dimensional world of ordinary experience—the universe filled with galaxies, stars, planets, houses, boulders, and people—is a hologram, an image of reality coded on a distant two-dimensional surface." As pointed out by Raphael Bousso, Thorn observed in 1978, that string theory admits a lower-dimensional description in which gravity emerges from it in what would now be called a holographic way. The prime example of holography is the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was established and put on a firm footing by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, though early contributions were made in the 1920s through the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley. It is at the intersection of electronic engineering, mathematics, statistics, computer science, neurobiology, physics, and electrical engineering.
Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both the technical definition in terms of Von Neumann entropy and the general computational term.
Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon of a group of particles being generated, interacting, or sharing spatial proximity in such a way that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance. The topic of quantum entanglement is at the heart of the disparity between classical and quantum physics: entanglement is a primary feature of quantum mechanics not present in classical mechanics.
In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. Sometimes called statistical physics or statistical thermodynamics, its applications include many problems in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, computer science, information theory and sociology. Its main purpose is to clarify the properties of matter in aggregate, in terms of physical laws governing atomic motion.
The arrow of time, also called time's arrow, is the concept positing the "one-way direction" or "asymmetry" of time. It was developed in 1927 by the British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, and is an unsolved general physics question. This direction, according to Eddington, could be determined by studying the organization of atoms, molecules, and bodies, and might be drawn upon a four-dimensional relativistic map of the world.
The mathematical expressions for thermodynamic entropy in the statistical thermodynamics formulation established by Ludwig Boltzmann and J. Willard Gibbs in the 1870s are similar to the information entropy by Claude Shannon and Ralph Hartley, developed in the 1940s.
Entropy is one of the few quantities in the physical sciences that require a particular direction for time, sometimes called an arrow of time. As one goes "forward" in time, the second law of thermodynamics says, the entropy of an isolated system can increase, but not decrease. Thus, entropy measurement is a way of distinguishing the past from the future. In thermodynamic systems that are not isolated, local entropy can decrease over time, accompanied by a compensating entropy increase in the surroundings; examples include objects undergoing cooling, living systems, and the formation of typical crystals.
Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos is a 2006 popular science book by Seth Lloyd, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book proposes that the Universe is a quantum computer (supercomputer), and advances in the understanding of physics may come from viewing entropy as a phenomenon of information, rather than simply thermodynamics. Lloyd also postulates that the Universe can be fully simulated using a quantum computer; however, in the absence of a theory of quantum gravity, such a simulation is not yet possible. "Particles not only collide, they compute."
The decisive event which established the discipline of information theory, and brought it to immediate worldwide attention, was the publication of Claude E. Shannon's classic paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal in July and October 1948.
Physics is a scientific discipline that seeks to construct and experimentally test theories of the physical universe. These theories vary in their scope and can be organized into several distinct branches, which are outlined in this article.
Natural computing, also called natural computation, is a terminology introduced to encompass three classes of methods: 1) those that take inspiration from nature for the development of novel problem-solving techniques; 2) those that are based on the use of computers to synthesize natural phenomena; and 3) those that employ natural materials to compute. The main fields of research that compose these three branches are artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, fractal geometry, artificial life, DNA computing, and quantum computing, among others.
Vlatko Vedral is a Serbian-born British physicist. He is best known for his contributions to quantum information theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum entanglement. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Imperial College London, where he graduated with a PhD in 1998.
The theoretical study of time travel generally follows the laws of general relativity. Quantum mechanics requires physicists to solve equations describing how probabilities behave along closed timelike curves (CTCs), which are theoretical loops in spacetime that might make it possible to travel through time.
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is a book by science history writer James Gleick, published in March 2011, which covers the genesis of the current Information Age. It was on The New York Times best-seller list for three weeks following its debut.
In quantum information theory, quantum discord is a measure of nonclassical correlations between two subsystems of a quantum system. It includes correlations that are due to quantum physical effects but do not necessarily involve quantum entanglement.
Algorithmic cooling is an algorithmic method for transferring heat from some qubits to others or outside the system and into the environment, which results in a cooling effect. This method uses regular quantum operations on ensembles of qubits, and it can be shown that it can succeed beyond Shannon's bound on data compression. The phenomenon is a result of the connection between thermodynamics and information theory.
The index of physics articles is split into multiple pages due to its size.
Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes is the third non-fiction book by American author and journalist Charles Seife. The book was initially published on January 30, 2007 by Viking.
Stochastic thermodynamics is an emergent field of research in statistical mechanics that uses stochastic variables to better understand the non-equilibrium dynamics present in many microscopic systems such as colloidal particles, biopolymers, enzymes, and molecular motors.
