This promising approach to understanding the cosmos is based on a collection of theories called loop quantum gravity, an attempt to merge general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single consistent theory...Are particles nothing more than tangled plaits in space-time?...

At every instant, quantum fluctuations rumple the network of space-time links, crinkling it into a jumble of humps and bumps. These structures are so ephemeral that they last for around 10-44 seconds before morphing into a new configuration. "If the network changes everywhere all the time, how come anything survives?" asks Markopoulou. "Even at the quantum level, I know that a photon or an electron lives for much longer that 10-44 seconds."

Markopoulou had already found an answer in a radical variant of loop quantum gravity she had been developing together with David Kribs, an expert in quantum computing at the University of Guelph in Ontario. While traditional computers store information in bits that can take the values 0 or 1, quantum computers use "qubits" that, in principle at least, can be 0 and 1 at the same time, which is what makes quantum computing such a powerful idea. Individual qubits' delicate duality is always at risk of being lost as a result of interactions with the outside world, but calculations have shown that collections of qubits are far more robust than one might expect, and that the data stored on them can survive all kinds of disturbance.

In Markopoulou and Kribs's version of loop quantum gravity, they considered the universe as a giant quantum computer, where each quantum of space is replaced by a bit of quantum information. Their calculations showed that the qubits' resilience would preserve the quantum braids in space-time, explaining how particles could be so long-lived amid the quantum turbulence.

Smolin, Markopoulou and Bilson-Thompson have now confirmed that the braiding of this quantum space-time can produce the lightest particles in the standard model - the electron, the "up" and "down" quarks, the electron neutrino and their antimatter partners (www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603022).

Meanwhile, Markopoulou's vision of the universe as a giant quantum computer might be more than a useful analogy: it might be true, according to some theorists. If so, there is one startling consequence: space itself might not exist. By replacing loop quantum gravity's chunks of space with qubits, what used to be a frame of reference - space itself - becomes just a web of information. If the notion of space ceases to have meaning at the smallest scale, Markopoulou says, some of the consequences of that could have been magnified by the expansion that followed the big bang. "My guess is that the non-existence of space has effects that are measurable, if you can only see it right." Because it's pretty hard to wrap your mind around what it means for there to be no space, she adds.

The ... remove large portions of text. So go read the article too.

This is why I love science so much. It just keeps falling into places that make sense. I mean, this is a very real possibliity of how the universe works.

We could actually figure that crap out someday and maybe someday soon.