Baby Steps Toward Quantum Computers

Mz6 writes "In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon called entanglement, which Einstein derided as 'spooky action at a distance' before experiments showed it was real. Such 'quantum teleportation' of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light. Teleportation between atoms could someday lie at the heart of powerful quantum computers, which are probably at least a decade away from development. Researchers using lab techniques can create a weird relationship between pairs of tiny particles. After that, the fate of one particle instantly affects the other; if one particle is made to take on a certain set of properties, the other immediately takes on identical or opposite properties, no matter how far away it is and without any apparent physical connection to the first particle." Reader starannihilator adds: "Physics Web provides a good graphic summary of the phenomenon, as well as a good technical article."

Buy stock now!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to invest in Skynet while the gittin's good.

Prime Intellect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this the correlation effect mentioned in the prime intellect story?

In the PI universe, a Beowulf cluster of these imagines YOU!

Teleportation

[Naffer]

So we've got the one atom thing down now. The trick is getting a whole lot of atoms to do it at the same time. If we can convince the porn industry that it would be beneficial to them, We'll be teleporting around the world in less then 5 years. Maybe I should patent teleporting prostitutes.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[Anonymous Coward]

It was just a dream, Bender. There's no such thing as two.

Re:can someone qualified answer this question

[Anonymous Coward]

Scotty's busy trying to talk to the mouse.

"HELLO COMPUTER"

A QM foray into the private lives of Alice and Bob

[wwest4]

Alice, instantaneously transfers information about the quantum state of a particle to a receiver called Bob. The uncertainty principle means that Alice cannot know the exact state of her particle. However, another feature of quantum mechanics called "entanglement" means that she can teleport the state to Bob.


Alice: Bob, now that our qubits are entangled, I don't know if mine's spin up down.

Bob: How 'bout I observe yours for you. How about there?

Alice: Nope.

Bob: Here?

Alice: Closer to this side of the gaussian, Bobby.

Bob: How about here?

Alice: OOOOOHHH! You collapsed my wave function DeBroglie!

Bob: Your qubit is now spin up, in case you were wondering... who's DeBroglie?

Spooky Action at a Distance

[www.fuckingdie.com]

What happens when quantum computers, which are able to use quantum teleportation, start to exert influence directly over the matter that makes up say a Human Brain for example. Or to make matters worse the brain accidentally starts to exert control over the computer.

"We are sorry - the application you were running has crashed because you were thinking unhappy thoughts."

or

"You have 60 seconds to close and save all thoughts before your brain will be automatically restarted"

Can we say sasser-"cranial edition"

Re:Yes, fast

[tachyonmkg]

Only the five richest kings of Europe will be able to afford them.

Re:Yes, fast

[jfern]

"We see a worldwide demand for maybe a couple of computers" - IBM
"640k of memory is enough for anyone" - Gates

Re:Yes, fast

[Bl33d4merican]

Only government would want new technology this fast, maybe your NSA, that around codebreaking.

Only the government would want it? Hell, I'd want it! Who wouldn't?

I want this stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine playing Unreal Tournament at a ping of 0? and having a Inernetlink with and unlimited speed? [well depends on the put and get on the link ion] You could probably syncronize what ever you want in just a few s.

kindest regards,
mo

Re:This...

[Mr. Roadkill]

Sounds more like the basis for instantanious comunication (read too much OSC). If we ever invented non reltivistic FTL or spread far enough that we'd need instantanious communication it would probably be based on this.

Actually, even if we never develop FTL transportation, FTL communication could be very, very useful.

Find stars with earth-like planets, send probes containing quantum-entangled data comms gear and pretty well documented interfaces, and invite them to offworld their call centres to India.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I love stuff about quantum computing!

[Anonymous Writer]

Too bad I can't bloody understand any of it!

This is not good...

[Barkmullz]

Having scientist using words like "spooky" and "weird" cannot be a good thing...

Re:Thanks!

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

Rarely does such a great opportunity to karma whore occurr. If you can troll, then I can whore.

Re: Pipe Dream vs Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

I stand by my prediction that there will never be a quantum computer. It's just a pipe dream of being able to compute all possible combinations simultaneously. It's one of those things that's just not going to happen. Other examples of things that will never happen, no matter how bad we want them:

• Natalie Portman + grits
• Cold fusion
• Time travel
• Warp drive
• Linux on the desktop
• World peace
• SCO execs get jailtime
• Quantum computers
• Teleportation
• Viable "step 2" in the three step business plan

The Improbability Theorem states that all of the above statements can be expressed as "step 1" in the three step business plan. I'll leave the proof as an exercise for the reader.

Headline

[commodoresloat]

Am I the only one who read the headline and imagined this giant baby walking slowly toward a rack of computers?

Quantum Window PCs?

[dcw3]

So does this mean that all the future Windows Quanta PCs will go blue screen at the same time?

I'm kidding...well, sorta.

Voodoo

[Sparky66]

I can't wait for this.. Imagine, once scaled up, this will allow real Voodoo dolls to work! I can't wait to get one, and teleport jabs to my ex-wife.

Re:Headline

[yecrom2]

Yes.
Yes you were.

Re:A QM foray into the private lives of Alice and

[EReidJ]

A quantum particle is speeding down the road in its car. A policeman pulls the particle over, gets out of his vehicle, and walks over to the quantum particle. The policeman asks:

"Do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

The particle replies,

"No, but I know exactly where I am!"

Ba-dah-bing!

Re:Help me understand this!

[pclminion]

Conciousness has been proved by experiment to be UNNECESSARY in causing objects to collapse to a well-defined state.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It is the most obvious and well-known way of causing states to collapse.