According to the standard model billions of years ago some little quantum fluctuation, perhaps a slightly lower density of matter, maybe right where we're sitting right now, caused our galaxy to start collapsing around here.

The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.

Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.

Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.

Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them. I cannot prove that electrons exist..........if you don't believe in them I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves.

Every physical system registers information, and just by evolving in time, by doing its thing, it changes that information, transforms that information, or, if you like, processes that information.

All physical systems can be thought of as registering and processing information, and how one wishes to define computation will determine your view of what computation consists of.