MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIE TY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC mAGAZiNe OF THe SOCie TY FOR SCieNCe & THe PUbLiC
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EDITOR IN CHIEF Tom Siegfried
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PHYSICAL SCIENCES Devin Powell
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Quantum physics axioms
back Wheeler’s ‘it from bit’
John Archibald Wheeler, the late physi-
cist most famous for coining the term
“black hole,” was fond of another phrase
of his invention that captivated the
imagination of many quantum physi-
cists: “It from bit.”
By “it from bit,” Wheeler meant to
suggest that physical existence itself (it)
somehow emerged from information processing (measured,
as in computer memory, in bits). Wheeler also went around
asking anyone who would listen, “How come the quantum?”
By that he meant: What is the underlying physical principle
(or principles) that would explain why the world is described
by the weird rules of quantum theory? He was pretty sure
that the two concepts — information and quantum reality — were intimately related.
Beginning in the 1980s, and then especially during the
’90s, many physicists worked on understanding information in the quantum sense, building on the standard classical
theory of information devised by Claude Shannon several
decades earlier. Quantum information theory dealt with
quantum bits of information (qubits), quantum coding for
secret messages, “teleportation” of qubits from one location to another and the possibility of developing futuristic
“quantum computers,” with powers (for some problems) far
exceeding those of ordinary chips.
Throughout the course of all this work, Wheeler’s “it from
bit” served as an influential slogan, but remained vague and
elusive. It did not really tell anybody how quantum reality
emerged from bits of information.
But now, as Devin Powell reports in this issue (Page 12),
physicists have given Wheeler’s slogan some substance.
Using one postulate and five axioms describing information
processes in physical terms, Giulio Chiribella and his collaborators have derived the basic mathematical framework
of quantum mechanics, the foundation on which modern
concepts of matter and energy rest.
“In this approach the rules by which information can be
processed determine the physical theory, in accordance with
Wheeler’s program ‘it from bit,’ ” the physicists write.
It may turn out that this particular approach does not
offer the only, or best, way to derive quantum mechanics
from information principles. But it surely does suggest that
Wheeler’s instinct shared certain features in common with
the way the universe works. — Tom Siegfried, Editor in Chief
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