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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Scientists Just Created Quantum Artificial Life For The First Time Ever [sciencealert.com]

Encoding behaviours related to self-replication, mutation, interaction between individuals, and (inevitably) death, a newly created quantum algorithm has been used to show that quantum computers can indeed mimic some of the patterns of biology in the real world.

[...] Using the IBM QX4 [bluemix.net] quantum computer, the researchers coded units of quantum life made up of two qubits [wikipedia.org] (those basic building blocks of quantum physics): one to represent the genotype (the genetic code passed between generations) and one to represent the phenotype (the outward manifestation of that code or the "body").

These units were then programmed to reproduce, mutate, evolve and die, in part using entanglement [wikipedia.org] – just as any real living being would. Random changes were introduced via rotations of the quantum state to simulate mutation, for example. The good news is that these actual quantum calculations matched theoretical models the team had come up with back in 2015 [technologyreview.com].

Also at Motherboard [vice.com].

Quantum Artificial Life in an IBM Quantum Computer [nature.com] (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-33125-3) (DX [doi.org])

Original Submission