WHAT IF we built a quantum computer and used it to run Stephen Wolfram’s
cellular-automaton-like model of the Universe (25 August, p 44), asks reader
Timothy Grange. “The entire multiverse could be simulated at a blinding pace . . .
we could interact with perfect simulations of whatever strange life has
evolved in other universes and our own . . . walk with the dinosaurs . . . and
spy on the future.”
Well, maybe. Feedback’s experience of admittedly non-quantum computers
suggests that the simulation would regularly halt and demand more resources
—and would probably go on doing so until…
