The human heart is a Turing Machine.
Researchers figured it out with an Xbox 360.
I realize how fake that sounds...but it’s real research published in Elsevier's Computational Biology and Chemistry journal in 2009.
Hearts are electrically excitable media.
Researchers figured it out with an Xbox 360.
I realize how fake that sounds...but it’s real research published in Elsevier's Computational Biology and Chemistry journal in 2009.
Hearts are electrically excitable media.
The author figured out you can build a NOR gate from heart cells.
NOR is a universal gate, so you can build all the other gates out of NORs.
Thus, arbitrary logic circuits, plus time…boom you have a computer.
But wait! Computers have interesting properties:
NOR is a universal gate, so you can build all the other gates out of NORs.
Thus, arbitrary logic circuits, plus time…boom you have a computer.
But wait! Computers have interesting properties:
Now that you’ve proven cardiac tissue is Turing complete, uh oh, it’s vulnerable to the Halting problem.
Thus, there is no general algorithm that can look at the state of cardiac tissue and decide if it will ever stop.
Arrhythmias are fundamentally uncomputable!
Thus, there is no general algorithm that can look at the state of cardiac tissue and decide if it will ever stop.
Arrhythmias are fundamentally uncomputable!
So why the Xbox 360?
Mostly, computational bang for the buck. But…I also speculate they were trying to be funny.
Consoles were somewhat lopsided in that era, you genuinely got a ton of compute if you knew how to use it.
The author writes some C++ for the simulation, ports some of it to HLSL shaders, and boom. Thousands of simulated cardiac cells running at high speed on a single box.
A fun benefit, you get visualizations for “free” by tacking on a little render code to the end of the sim.
It’s certainly an entertaining read, even if the utility is questionable.
The original title of the paper if you want to search:
“Implications of the Turing completeness of reaction-diffusion models, informed by GPGPU simulations on an XBox 360: Cardiac arrhythmias, re-entry and the
Halting problem”
Mostly, computational bang for the buck. But…I also speculate they were trying to be funny.
Consoles were somewhat lopsided in that era, you genuinely got a ton of compute if you knew how to use it.
The author writes some C++ for the simulation, ports some of it to HLSL shaders, and boom. Thousands of simulated cardiac cells running at high speed on a single box.
A fun benefit, you get visualizations for “free” by tacking on a little render code to the end of the sim.
It’s certainly an entertaining read, even if the utility is questionable.
The original title of the paper if you want to search:
“Implications of the Turing completeness of reaction-diffusion models, informed by GPGPU simulations on an XBox 360: Cardiac arrhythmias, re-entry and the
Halting problem”
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