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Stellar evolution from a protostar to neutron star is of one of the best studied subjects in modern astrophysics. Yet, it appears that there is still a lot to learn about the extreme conditions where the fundamental particle physics meets strong gravity regime. After all of the thermonuclear fuel is spent, and after the supernova explosion, but before the remaining mass crosses its own Schwarzschild radius, the temperature of the central core of the star might become higher than the electroweak symmetry restoration temperature. The source of energy, which can at least temporarily balance gravity, are baryon number violating instanton processes which are basically unsuppressed at temperatures above the electroweak scale. We constructed a solution to the Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation which describes such a star. The energy release rate is enormous at the core, but gravitational redshift and the enhanced neutrino interaction cross section at these densities make the energy release rate moderate at the surface of the star. The lifetime of this new quasi-equilibrium can be more than ten million years, which is long enough to represent a new stage in the evolution of a star.

We will give a short overview of non-perturbative quantum gravity models and discuss some key common problems for these models. In particular we will analyze what background independence requires from a theory of quantum gravity.

The original motivation to build a quantum computer came from Feynman who envisaged a machine capable of simulating generic quantum mechanical systems, a task that is intractable for classical computers. Such a machine would have tremendous applications in all physical sciences, including condensed matter physics, chemistry, and high energy physics. Part of Feynman's challenge was met by Lloyd who showed how to approximately decompose the time-evolution operator of interacting quantum particles into a short sequence of elementary gates, suitable for operation on a quantum computer. However, this left open the more fundamental problem of how to simulate the equilibrium and static properties of quantum systems. This requires the preparation of ground and Gibb's states on a quantum computer. For classical systems, this problem is solved by the ubiquitous Metropolis algorithm, a method that basically acquired a monopoly for the simulation of interacting particles. In this talk, I will demonstrate that the corresponding quantum problem can be solved by a quantum Metropolis algorithm. This validates the quantum computer as a universal simulator, and proves that the so-called sign problem occurring in quantum Monte Carlo methods can be resolved with a quantum computer.