Because of the physical limitations of silicon-based circuitry, there is an upper limit to how powerful a modern computer can be made. In response to this, researchers have been looking into other mediums to build faster and more powerful computers from, including using quantum-based processors, and neurological chips based on human brain cells. Another promising idea, based on DNA, plans to utilize the otherwise naturally-occurring computer of genetics.
read more

A growing number of scientists are starting to seriously consider the possibility that we are living in a Matrix-like computer simulation, including influential physicists such as Dr. Michio Kaku. And some are actively looking for scientific clues as to whether or not this is a constructed reality, as a team of researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany are doing, looking for patterns in simulations of the mechanics of the universe, and seeing if those patterns also hold true to "real life".
read more

Recovered from a 1st-century Roman shipwreck in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism is the world’s oldest known analog computer, at an estimated 2,200 years old. While the device’s mechanism has long since been known to have involved astronomical calculations, its full nature has been shrouded in mystery, with the mechanism’s approximately 30 bronze gears having corroded into a single lump over the millennia that it lay on the seafloor. However, new examinations by a multi-national research team have deciphered nearly all of the surviving text that had been inscribed on the device by its builder from ancient Greece.
read more