News

20 December 2015: We are looking back at a very succesful conference and are pleased to announce that the videorecordings and sheets of nearly all presentations are on-line now - see the programme.

A nice group photo in front of the Infoversum.

Michael Schirber wrote a very nice article; for Phyiscs about the Information Universe 2015 conference.

Welcome

The main ambition of this conference is to explore the question “What is the role of information in the physics of our Universe?“. This intellectual pursuit may have a key role in improving our understanding of the Universe at a time when we “build technology to acquire and manage Big Data“, “discover highly organized information systems in nature“ and “attempt to solve outstanding issues on the role of information in physics“. The conference intends to address the “in vivo“ (role of information in nature) and “in vitro“ (theory and models) aspects of the Information Universe.

The discussions about the role of information will include the views and thoughts of several disciplines: astronomy, physics, computer science, mathematics, life sciences, quantum computing, and neuroscience. Different scientific communities hold various and sometimes distinct formulations of the role of information in the Universe indicating we still lack understanding of its intrinsic nature. During this conference we will try to identify the right questions, which may lead us towards an answer.

- Is the universe one big information processing machine?
- Is there a deeper layer in quantum mechanics?
- Is the universe a hologram?
- Is there a deeper physical description of the world based on information?
- How close/far are we from solving the black hole information paradox?
- What is the role of information in highly organized complex life systems?
- The Big Data Universe and the Universe : are our numerical simulations and Big Data repositories (in vitro) different from real natural system (in vivo)?
- Is this the road to understanding dark matter, dark energy?

The conference will be held in the new 260 seats planetarium theatre in Groningen, which provides an inspiring immersive 3D full dome display, e.g. numerical simulations of the formation of our Universe, and anything else our presenters wish to bring in. The digital planetarium setting will be used to visualize the theme with modern media.

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Invited speakers

  • Tamara Davis

    Professor Cosmology & Astrophysics
    Centre of Excellence in All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), Australia

  • Felix Schürmann

    Co-director of the Blue Brain Project
    EPFL, Switzerland

  • Renate Loll

    Professor Theoretical Physics (Quantum Gravity)
    IMAPP at Radboud University, Netherlands

 

  • Alessandra Silvestri

    Fellow of the Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics
    Lorentz Institute at Leiden University, Netherlands

  • Barbara Terhal

    Professor Theoretical Physics (Condensed Matter)
    Institute for Quantum Information at RWTH Aachen University, Germany

  • Karlheinz Meier

    Leader Neuromorphic Computing Platform of the Human Brain Project
    University of Heidelberg, Germany