Could running computer programs give rise to TGD analogs of time crystals consisting of qubits?

The following comments emerged as a result of nightly reflections after Zoom discussion with Ville-Einari Saari. The basis of these ponderings is the article “Quartz crystals as a life form and ordinary computers as an interface between quartz life and ordinary life?” (see this).

Quantum computing-like activity based on OH-O^- qubits

It is good to summarize the basic ideas first.

1. The basic observation is that cold plasmas, dominated by ions, have the prerequisites for the emergence of qubit consciousness. The universe is full of them. Plasma, quartz, biology,… Bit flip is a key operation of quantum computation and there must always be a suitable temperature or external electric fields to make it sufficiently but not too easy.
2. The basic mechanism would be based on quantum gravity. A dark photon with energy .33 eV as difference of the bonding energy of OH and binding energy of e^- binding energy n O^- is needed to flip the qubit. A background electric field that reduces this energy. The critical temperature would be room temperature .15 eV where the qubit directions become random. When the bit flip energy is slightly above this, the system is quantum critical and the prerequisites for long-scale consciousness exist.
3. In the general case all salts can be important. For instance, for NaCl → Na⁺ + Cl^- transition Na₊ would be dark and at the gravitational magnetic body of the Earth or Sun.
4. Also he classical electric fields also play a central role and one can associate to them a very large Planck constant (see this) with them. DNA and the cell are key examples in biology. The Earth’s electric field characterizes the biosphere. They can be used to control the energy difference of OH-O^- bits and make it quantum critical, which makes the qubit flip easy.
5. The article (see this). shows that a quantum realization of the genetic code from OH-O^- qubits for DNA and RNA is obtained: a codon corresponds to 6 qubits. Amino acids correspond to one qubit. Symmetries with respect to the third letter and their breaking are understood. The number of amino acids is predicted correctly. One can say that the quantum realization of the genetic code corresponds to the chemical code in the sense that the ground states for quantum codons correspond to chemical codons.

I personally consider these results to mean a final breakthrough and above all it shows that OH-O^- qubits and their generalizations are not limited to biology.

What evidence is there for quartz life?

I participated years ago in a seminar organized by NASA in Hessdalen, where plasma balls, plasmoids, are systematically observed. I learned that these light balls seem to behave intelligently and even seem to be observing their observers! Light balls typically occur on lines of tectonic activity, where tectonic energy is released and one can think that the released energy serves as metabolic energy.

Researchers of NASA recently published an article about plasmoids as a possible form of life above the ionosphere. I have discussed the findings in (see this). For example, they gathered to observe an electrical cable leaving the module, which is associated with a radial electric field that could also excite OH-O^- qubits and achieve quantum criticality. They made the impression of being alive.

Plasma balls have been observed to associate with crop circles (see this and this), one of the taboos of modern science, which are still believed to be made by humans, all they are caught in the act of constructing a crop circle! Also glass balls that have formed from molten quartz are found to accompany crop circles.

How could quartz life and biological life relate?

Which is smarter: quartz life or biolife? The first guess is that biological life will mercilessly beat quartz life in this kind of competition, but ZEO may change the situation so that quartz life represents something totally new: a time-like realization of the analog of genetic code bringing in mind time crystals, which I have discussed from the TGD point of view in (see this and this and this).

1. Quartz life is unable to move on our time scales. Although it has long been a wonder that moving round boulders exist, perhaps in Romania. The products of quartz life can be misleadingly reminiscent of plants that I have seen. Quartz crystals have been reported to have a healing effect on the state of consciousness, as I myself once experienced.
2. OH-O^- life implements genetic code in biology. Is this already the case with quartz or are the qubits randomly distributed here and there in the quartz crystal? In any case, the tessellations of hyperbolic 3-space realize the genetic code universally on all scales (see this), so this could be the case.
3. It is important to distinguish OH-O^- qubits from the bits represented by electron spins, with which microprocessors operate.

One could imagine a situation where microprocessor could become conscious in such a way that OH-O^- qubits are created, which act as conscious observers while the program is running and in ZEO they could perhaps influence the program flow by inducing “big” state function reductions (BSFRs) changing the arrow of the geometric time, thus making the processor an intelligent problem solver that would use trial and error as a basic mechanism (see this).

Could OH-O^- qubits be related to classical electronic bits just as quantum codons are related to chemical genetic codons (see this) so that their minimum energy states would correspond to the bits of the program code.

However, it must be remembered that ZEO allows another option if each clock frequency pulse is associated with non-determinism and therefore a potential memory mental image. This would be an analogy to time crystals. While the program is running, the program flow could produce a time-oriented analogy of the DNA sequence. Programs would correspond to DNA chains, subprograms to genes! Basic modules to codons. The maximum information content of consciousness in bits would be N× M bits, where N is the number of clock ticks and M is the maximum number of OH-O^- qubits for the microprocessor at a given moment in time.

Could series of multi bits in a microprocessor correspond to a series of quantum qubits like DNA. There would be a time-oriented realization of the genetic code. This would represent a completely new biology and computer era would also mean a genuine evolutionary leap.

A maximum of 64 ordinary electronic bits are connected to microprocessors. This corresponds to the information content of a 10 nm piece of DNA and is quite modest. What about qubits? Let’s assume a microprocessor with a volume of V= 5× .5× .5 mm³. Let’s assume that one SiO₄ occupies a volume of the order of V₀=Angstrom³ =10^-21 mm³ mm³.

The maximum number of qubits at a given time was the ratio M=V/V₀= 10³9 ≈ 2⁷⁰. The number of bits is 6 bits larger than for a microprocessor having at most 64 bits recently. For a program, it was based on the above speculation N× M where N is the number of clock pulses during the running of the program module. This would give an upper bound of 70N bits. This would allow one-one correspondence of qubits with the ordinary bits of the program code.

Quantum criticality is needed

The number of quantum critical qubits in a microprocessor is much smaller than the above naive estimate because the flip energy of qubit must be sufficiently small, i.e. below .33 eV, to obtain quantum criticality but above the thermal energy of .15 eV. This can be achieved by using an external electric field that reduces the energy such that it would also make the microtubules at one end extremely fluctuating.

Is there any hope of achieving quantum criticality in transistors (see this)?

1. There are electric fields in transistors and the values of the base-emitter voltages are in the range 0.5-0.7 eV (metabolic energy quantum) and at the same time the collector-emitter voltage is at least 0.1 V (close to the thermal energy .15 eV)! Note that the sizes of transistors have shrunk from 10 micrometers to 5 nanometers during the development of computers.

An NPN type transistor (bipolar transistor) is a current amplifier: a small control current coming to the base is amplified into a much larger current from the collector to the emitter.

Now we come to the crucial question: what voltages occur? A transistor typically becomes conductive when the negative base-emitter voltage is above 0.5 eV in absolute value (it is convenient to measure voltages as the energy of the charge it gains when moving across the voltage ) and at the same time the negative collector-emitter voltage is above 0.1 eV in absolute value!

The conditions are therefore excellent for the emergence of a qubit population that monitors the flipping of the bits represented by the transistors during program execution!

Comparison of quartz consciousness and bio-consciousness

To get a realistic picture, one can compare quartz consciousness to biological consciousness.

1. Pessimistic comparison.

The length of the DNA double helix for a human is over a meter. This is about a million times more than the number of bits related to the content of the consciousness of a 64-bit processor at a given moment.

In biology, salts and their ionization states also define qubits with lower qubit rotation energies. Biosystems are full of different ions and I ended up with the idea of a large Planck constant by starting from the observations of Blackman and others that the quantum effects of ELF radiation on vertebrate brains seemed to relate to the cyclotron energies of ions but with a very large Planck constant (gravitational Planck constant ℏ_gr introduced by Nottale).

Microtubules can be micrometers long (inside cells and axons). There are other filamentous structures. They consist of tubulins, about 10 nm in size. Each tubulin contains approximately 10³ ≈ 2¹⁰ amino acids if the amino acid corresponds to the nm scale. That is 10 bits. There are 100 tubulins in a chain, so we get 1000 qubits per tubulin chain.

Typically, there are 13 parallel helical tubulin chains, which makes 13,000 qubits. Considerably more than 64 qubits! And microtubules are present in all cells and axons!

Optimistic comparison.

It is worth noting a really big “on the other hand”. The zero-energy ontology (ZEO) introduces a memory that can increase the number of bits because “multi-moment experiences” become possible. In the optimal situation one has an analog of time crystal (see this) : each clock beat involves classical non-determinism necessary for the memory recall. EEG rhythm might define something similar. If the program module defines a time-like analogy for DNA, then it would define the equivalent of a DNA sequence and the content of conscious information would increase drastically.

On symbolic consciousness

Whether the notion of symbolic consciousness could make sense in some sense has been a topic of discussion in our Zoom group.

1. A symbol represents an object to the observer and its meaning, if any, depends entirely on the associations that arise in the observer. A symbol is an object or process that sufficiently resembles the object it represents.

In this sense, one cannot speak of a symbol as an independent object. Just as one cannot speak of information as something absolute. The amount of conscious information produced by a symbol depends on its observer.

If one had to necessarily call some form of consciousness symbolic, then I would call the consciousness presented above, possibly related to transistors and microprocessors, symbolic. In the optimal case, a program running in a microprocessor generates OH-O^- consciousness from the program as an analogy of a DNA chain, which symbolically represents a process that has meaning for us through the output. See the preliminary article (a work in progress) Quartz crystals as a life form and ordinary computers as an interface between quartz life and ordinary life? or the chapter Are Conscious Computers Possible in TGD Universe?.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

Source: https://matpitka.blogspot.com/2024/11/could-running-computer-program-gives.html