Computronium is a material hypothesized by

Norman Margolus Norman H. Margolus (born 1955) is a Canadian-American physicist and computer scientist, known for his work on cellular automata and reversible computing.. He is a research affiliate with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laborator ...

and

Tommaso Toffoli Tommaso Toffoli () is an Italian-American professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University where he joined the faculty in 1995. He has worked on cellular automata and the theory of artificial life (with Edward Fredkin and oth ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1991 to be used as "

programmable matter Programmable matter is matter which has the ability to change its physical properties (shape, density, moduli, conductivity, optical properties, etc.) in a programmable fashion, based upon user input or autonomous sensing. Programmable matter is ...

", a substrate for

computer modeling Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be dete ...

of virtually any real object. It also refers to a arrangement of matter that is the best possible form of computing device for that amount of matter. In this context, the term can refer both to a theoretically perfect arrangement of hypothetical materials that would have been developed using nanotechnology at the molecular, atomic, or subatomic level (in which case this interpretation of computronium could be

unobtainium Unobtainium is a term used in fiction, engineering, and common situations for a material ideal for a particular application but impractically hard to get. Unobtainium originally referred to materials that do not exist at all, but can also be used ...

), and to the best possible achievable form using currently available and used computational materials. According to the Barrow scale, a modified variant of the

Kardashev scale The Kardashev scale ( Russian: Шкала Кардашева, ''Shkala Kardasheva'') is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use. The measure was proposed by S ...

created by British physicist

John D. Barrow John David Barrow (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011. Barrow was also a writer of pop ...

, which is intended to categorize the development stage of

extraterrestrial civilization Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might ...

s, it would be conceivable that advanced civilizations do not claim more and more space and resources, but optimize their already available space increasingly, for example by building a

matrioshka brain A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure of immense computational capacity powered by a Dyson sphere. It was proposed in 1997 by Robert J. Bradbury (1956–2011). It is an example of a class-B stellar engine, employing the entire energy ...

consisting of several layers of computronium around their star. In the 2010 film '' The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About the Future'', American futurist

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and e ...

discusses a universe filled with computronium. He believes this could be possible as early as the late 22nd century and would be accomplished by sending intelligent

nanobot Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to mi ...

s through the universe faster than light, e.g. by using

wormhole A wormhole ( Einstein-Rosen bridge) is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations. A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate p ...

s. According to him, such an endeavor would have the potential to prevent the natural ending of the universe. In addition, the term computronium is used in connection with

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

narratives.

References

{{reflist Fictional computers Fictional materials Hypothetical technology

See also

References