Quantum Mechanics and the Origin of Life

Abstract

The race to build a quantum computer has led to a radical re-evaluation of the concept of information. In this paper I conjecture that life, defined as an information processing and replicating system, may be exploiting the considerable efficiency advantages offered by quantum computation, and that quantum information processing may dramatically shorten the odds for life originating from a random chemical soup. The plausibility of this conjecture rests, however, on life somehow circumventing the decoherence effects of the environment. I offer some speculations on ways in which this might happen.