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arXiv · 1312.4456

Uncomputability and physical law

Seth Lloyd
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Abstract

This article addresses the question of when physical laws and their consequences can be computed. If a physical system is capable of universal computation, then its energy gap can't be computed. At an even more fundamental level, the most concise, simply applicable formulation of the underlying laws of physics is uncomputable. That is, physicists are in the same boat as mathematicians: many quantities of interest can be computed, but not all.

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Seth Lloyd. 2013-12-16. Uncomputability and physical law. https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4456

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