When two atoms in a gas collide, the information they register is transformed and processed. How does the information processing performed during atomic collision relate to the information processing performed by the logic gates described in the first part of this book? In fact, as pointed out by Edward Fredkin of Carnegie Mellon University and Tommaso Toffoli of Boston University, atomic collisions naturally perform AND, OR, NOT, and COPY logic operations. In the language of information processing, atomic collisions are computationally universal.
