So … What If Aliens’ Quantum Computers Explain Dark Energy?

When I lived in the Bay Area, I used to get together with my friend Jaron Lanier to explore the implications of spectacularly weird thought experiments. Suppose that there are lots of alien civilizations running hugely capacious quantum computers of the sort that Google and others are just beginning to build here on Earth. Could we humans see evidence of a universe teeming with quantum computers by carefully examining the night sky? So here it is: First, alien quantum computers could explain the mystery of dark energy, because computation by multitudes of alien creatures across the universe bends the universe as a whole. Because we can observe the effect of dark energy, accelerating the expansion of the universe, this implies that we have already seen evidence that our universe is alive beyond us—we just haven’t recognized it as such!