February 2024
In the quantum world, time, matter and mathematics interact in strange ways.
Sending the Fibonacci sequence into a quantum computer seems to create a new phase of matter, according to a Nature article published in 2022. The Fibonacci sequence is a number sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones – 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. The sequence is noticeable everywhere in nature, from the macrocosm to the microcosm.
The phase of matter that emerges when you shoot laser pulses following the Fibonacci numbers into a quantum computer is a sort of quasicrystal. The study concludes that this phase is more stable than ordinary matter. It can make quantum computers more robust.
From an everyday, Newtonian perspective, other weird things also happen:
“What we realized is that by using quasi-periodic sequences based on the Fibonacci pattern, you can have the system behave as if there are two distinct directions of time,” said Philipp Dumitrescu, the paper’s lead author, to Gizmodo magazine.
Anders Bolling
