Quantum Computing May Be Closer Than Expected With 'Game Changer' Discovery (inverse.com) 58
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University describe a superconducting material, B-Bi2Pd, that naturally exists in a quantum state without the additional influence of magnetic fields usually needed for such an effect. The authors write that the low-maintenance, stability of this material makes it a perfect candidate for designing quantum systems. The research will be published Friday in the journal Science by physicists from Johns Hopkins University. "We've found that a certain superconducting material contains special properties that could be the building blocks for technology of the future," the paper's first author, Yufan Li, said in a press release. "A ring of B-Bi2Pd already exists in the ideal state and doesn't require any additional modifications to work. This could be a game changer."
What makes this superconducting material special is the unique state it occupies as its ground state, or when no other forces are being exerted on it. While other superconducting materials can be forced to maintain a quantum state using external magnetic fields or energy-sustaining "quantum spin liquid," the researchers found that this material naturally exists in a quantum superposition, in which current can simultaneously flow clockwise and counter-clockwise in a ring of the material. This discovery is the realization of a prediction made by physicists in the 80s. The authors write that this property makes it an ideal candidate for quantum systems. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet when it comes to our halting approach to universal quantum computing.
What makes this superconducting material special is the unique state it occupies as its ground state, or when no other forces are being exerted on it. While other superconducting materials can be forced to maintain a quantum state using external magnetic fields or energy-sustaining "quantum spin liquid," the researchers found that this material naturally exists in a quantum superposition, in which current can simultaneously flow clockwise and counter-clockwise in a ring of the material. This discovery is the realization of a prediction made by physicists in the 80s. The authors write that this property makes it an ideal candidate for quantum systems. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet when it comes to our halting approach to universal quantum computing.
Re: The Internet no longer exists. (Score:1)
As of the November hardfork you'll be able to securely combine multiple Schnorr signatures into a P2PKH Bitcoin address and transact it without anybody else knowing who the participants are. Local.Bitcoin.com should support this for escrow transactions on roughly Day One with DEX's based on atomic swaps coming along shortly.
D-Wave (Score:2)
Bonuspoints for the science Journalist who figures out why D-Wave is called D-Wave.
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Dong. The D is for Dong.
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Dope, Doping, Doped
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Bonuspoints for the science Journalist who figures out why D-Wave is called D-Wave.
With a bit of luck the science journalist has access to a brand new technology called The Internet. There they might try a brand new website called The Wikipedia. From that site they might be able to read that the "d" from d-wave comes from the mathematical term "derivative".
Emphasis mine ... (Score:4, Funny)
But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet when it comes to our halting approach to universal quantum computing.
When the word, "may," appears in the headline, "may not," is implied.
Re:quantum people don't know about "may". "Is not" (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally "may" implies "may not".
However, this is about quantum stuff. It appears, to this layman, that the quantum people don't have "may" in their vocabulary, so they insist that if you don't know yet, it's both true and false.
There actually is a cat in a box right now. You can't see the box. There is a radioactive thing in the box. Since the quantum dude can't see the cat, he says it is dead - and alive. Other people say the cat may be alive. I happen to be in this very large box (my house) with the cat, and I can assure you the cat is very much not dead. Just because quantum guy isn't here to see it doesn't kill the cat.
Or maybe the quantum folks are just really, really bad at explaining this idea. Because it sounds like they are saying that any car they can't see is dead. And is alive. Normal people just say "I don't know, the cat may be dead".
I have some news for you that comes from a non-lay.
Schrödinger's cat is a paradox. Paradoxes in science are often crafted to mock a hypothesis. That's what happened here. Heisenberg and others offered the Copenhagen Interpretation (notice it's not a theory) back in the 1930s.
Schrödinger was essentially saying, "If what you propose is true, here's a paradox that would arise. The Copenhagen Interpretation, though long discredited, is taught in basic quantum mechanics as a way to explain the state of the art today.
The problem with Schrödinger's cat is that all the elements of the experiment are macro objects and therefore behave according to Classical physics and are much too large to exhibit quantum properties.
Quantum mechanics is much too new for us to have a firm grasp. However, the Schrödinger's cat and Copenhagen Interpretation have certainly yielded to quantum field theory, much of which has been tested and found to be true.
It's MUCH too early to predict what quantum mechanics can do for us. It will be many decades before we get the physics under control.
In the meantime, "guesses," like that presented in the OP will abound.
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I'd love to get a basic grasp of basically what quantum is all about. I do know particles spin two (or more?) ways (at least that's the representation). You said:
> SchrÃdinger's cat is a paradox. Paradoxes in science are often crafted to mock a hypothesis. That's what happened here. Heisenberg and others offered the Copenhagen Interpretation (notice it's not a theory) back in the 1930s.
Then what, if you can tell me, is the value of regularly bringing this up when attempting to summarize a basic id
Re:quantum people don't know about "may". "Is not" (Score:5, Insightful)
That question's a bit difficult to answer, but I'll try. Quantum mechanics experiments usually involve something really small, like an atom or electron, interacting with a much larger measuring device. In Heisenberg's formulation of it, you describe the small thing with quantum mechanics, but you describe the measuring device with classical mechanics. Heisenberg insisted you had to do it that way. He said you needed a sharp line between the small thing you're measuring and the big thing you're measuring it with.
But he was wrong. Quantum mechanics describes lab equipment just as well as electrons. And what Heisenberg called "the collapse of the wavefunction" was just an artifact of trying to split up the world like that. The modern way we describe it is to say the electron and measuring device become "entangled" with each other. That means their probabilities are correlated. After the experiment, there's a nonzero chance the electron has spin up and the measuring device is reporting "spin up". And there's also a chance the electron has spin down and the device is reporting "spin down". But the chance of the electron being spin up and the device reporting "spin down" is basically zero.
What does entanglement really mean though? Is the electron/device system in one definite state, and we just don't know which one until we look at the display? Or does its state not really become defined until we look? Or perhaps it never becomes defined, and we ourselves split into two probabilities when we look at it?
We don't know. Different interpretations say different things. We have a lot of interpretations (dozens of them), and we don't know which is correct. They're all consistent with the experiments we've done so far. Some people get very attached to particular interpretations and try to insist the one they like best is clearly right. They're wrong. We just don't have enough evidence to say which interpretation is right.
Thanks (Score:2)
Thanks for that. Much appreciated.
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Thanks for that. Much appreciated.
I'd like to clear up a point: Measurement.
Not stressed enough is that we don't mean just HUMAN measurement. Anytime a quantum particle interacts with anything else, that's a "measurement."
The consequences of measurement are all the same, be it human, accidental, random, planned, or otherwise.
Measurements have been happening WAY (3.8 billion years) before humans arrived (hominids about 2.5 - 4 million years ago, first modern humans 200,000-300,000 years ago, and capacity about 50,000 years ago).
Some branches
Philosophy vs physics (Score:2)
I had noticed there seems to be a mix of philosophy and physics here. "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" kind of stuff. The physics of that are quite well understood. When discussing the physics of tree sounds, it is not helpful to bring in philosophy. Especially philosophy that appears likely to have been written while under the influence of a green leafy substance.
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I had noticed there seems to be a mix of philosophy and physics here. "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" kind of stuff. The physics of that are quite well understood. When discussing the physics of tree sounds, it is not helpful to bring in philosophy. Especially philosophy that appears likely to have been written while under the influence of a green leafy substance.
Good thinking.
I gift to you this little gem: "Is the glass half empty or half full?"
It's always full. Air is a thing.
Even in a vacuum, it's a quantum vacuum that is best described as "foam."
The glass is always full, philosophers be damned.
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> SchrÃdinger's cat is a paradox.
Jesus christ, Marie.
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People forget on what the thought experiment was based: a radiactive isotope, a giger counter and a bottle of poison gas. ... so the "paradoxon" was: "the cat would be dead and alife at the same time" ... obviously impossible, but you know nothing unless you look.
If, the giger counter was triggered by a decay, it would trigger opening the gas.
However if it has triggered or not, you can only observe by oopening the box
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Just to add to what CaptainDork said about Schroedinger's cat, the thought experiment implies that opening the box and looking does something special. This type of thinking leads to a lot of woo. "Observation" isn't really you looking, it's interacting a carefully prepared, very simple system with a big, complicated one.
The poison canister trigger is really the "observation" in the thought experiment, not the person opening the box and looking at the cat.
One of the best descriptions of the whole wavefunctio
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It's MUCH too early to predict what quantum mechanics can do for us. It will be many decades before we get the physics under control.
Uhm, no?
All modern electronics is based on quantum effects. We actually know pretty well how things work down there, we just don't know: why.
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It's MUCH too early to predict what quantum mechanics can do for us. It will be many decades before we get the physics under control.
Uhm, no?
All modern electronics is based on quantum effects. We actually know pretty well how things work down there, we just don't know: why.
Really?
Cars are based on quantum effects. Baseball trajectories are based on quantum effects, Like those example, electronics is based on quantum effects.
The other thing they all have in common is that they conform and comply with the Standard model of Classical physics.
You and I are Classical physicists. If I through a baseball at you, because you've "experimented" (learned and practiced), you judge the parabolic trajectory caused by the extant Earth's gravitational field, make millions of corrective calcu
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Cars are based on quantum effects. Baseball trajectories are based on quantum effects
Nope
Perhaps you want to read a book or some wikipedia about it.
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Cars are based on quantum effects. Baseball trajectories are based on quantum effects
Nope
Perhaps you want to read a book or some wikipedia about it.
Perhaps I did and you didn't. Spoiler: I did and do. I am a quantum mechanics fundamentalist.
Let's think about this together and I'm sure you'll agree that cars are based on quantum mechanics, and, besides, who doesn't love a car analogy?
You know that quantum theory deals with the microscopic. Classical physics deals with the macro. We are at a point where we're experimenting with the mesoscopic -- the in-between stuff -- to discover just where (and hopefully why) the bright lines are.
While those quanta app
Re: quantum people don't know about "may". "Is not (Score:2)
This shouldn't have been moderated troll.
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This shouldn't have been moderated troll.
I agree.
I know I felt the same way before I did my deep dive.
Quantum mechanics is not intuitive.
It wasn't trolling. It was thinking.
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When a well known troll posts useless stuff that often happens. It happens a lot less to people who don't troll a lot of the time.
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When a well known troll posts useless stuff that often happens. It happens a lot less to people who don't troll a lot of the time.
Actually, it happens and not happens until something happens. :)
Palladium... (Score:3)
I hope they don't need much, as Pd is exceptionally rare!
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And we'll have plenty mining junkyards when there are no more catalytic converters.
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Apparently it's probably economically viable to sweep the shoulders of highways and extract the Pd from the dust.
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I hope they don't need much, as Pd is exceptionally rare!
Yet it's only slightly pricier than gold, despite having industrial use.
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The Spanish dumped a bunch of it into the ocean because they considered it basically counterfeit silver.
This sounds like (Score:2)
This reminds me of those "Scientists find way to double capacity of Li Batteries" articles. Actually, isn't it time to be getting one of those again?
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I suppose your one-button mind would see it that way. For somebody with a brain, this quantum state not needing a magnetic field to produce it is fascinating and new.
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It is fascinating and new. But it is nothing that will give us Quantum Computers.
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It is fascinating and new. But it is nothing that will give us Quantum Computers.
How do you know this? Details please. (not holding my breath)
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The burden of proof is the other way round. Rather obviously. Or do you think it is valid to assume anything with "Quantum" will produce Quantum Computers?
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Yah, fuck you, you got nothing. Why did you even waste the internet bits posting.
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You have been... you get the double capacity battery compared to 10-12 years ago when it's in mass production, because it takes a long time to get new tech into production, if you can even get the investors to choose your tech over the other dozens that claim the same advantage.
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You have been... you get the double capacity battery compared to 10-12 years ago when it's in mass production, because it takes a long time to get new tech into production, if you can even get the investors to choose your tech over the other dozens that claim the same advantage.
Have we? There was already a variation of at least 1:4 in capacity depending on construction. The highest capacity cells all use space saving prismatic construction but the chemistry and materials did not change. Even NiCd and NiMH cells took advantage of this at one time to "double" their capacity.
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I am still waiting for holographic disk and tape storage....
Uh-oh (Score:2)
A ring of B-Bi2Pd already exists in the ideal state and ...
Don't actually look at this ring [wikipedia.org] or you may get thrown into a quantum-uncertain state of existence [wikipedia.org]. Uncertainty is inherently unsustainable. Eventually everything either is or isn't. And you'll have about seven days to be “is”.
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Meh if all they needed was something that naturally exists in a quantum state all they had to do was look at the back of their computer. The USB Type A ports don't decode which way they are oriented until you actually try to plug them in, then they experience a quantum collapse to ensure you have the cable upside down.
So stuff can flow in both directions, (Score:2)
What Temperature? (Score:1)
The article doesn't mention if it works at room temperature yet, or if it still has to be super-cooled to insanely cold temperatures like current quantum computing systems.
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You should assume that the material is not a room-temperature superconductor. Otherwise the hype related to the article would be off the charts.
Why would we do this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Person one: Why would we want to make a quantum computer? ... Can we revisit my original question?
Person two: Because it can do some types of math far faster than any traditional computer?
Person one: Like what?
Person two: It could crack every current cryptography used online in microseconds completely upending the entire world's economy.
Person one:
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Person one: Why would we want to make a quantum computer? ... Can we revisit my original question?
Person two: Because it can do some types of math far faster than any traditional computer?
Person one: Like what?
Person two: It could crack every current cryptography used online in microseconds completely upending the entire world's economy.
Person one:
Person two: If we don't. Someone else will first.
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haha, the extant quantum computers are tiny toys that can't do such Herculean feats as cracking elliptical cryptography. Oh my sides. They are research devices with no practical application whatsoever. And doing QED for chemical computations? Hahahaha, no that is so utterly beyond anything coming in the next half century it's a farce to suggest it except as science fiction plot prop.
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Quantum Computing May Be Closer (Score:2)
Only 10 more years and we'll all see! It's gonna be even more closest then!
Please stop the bullshit already.... (Score:2)
No, it is not close. It is not even really known whether it can work for non-toy computations at all. And even if it will finally work (in >100 years from the progress observable in the last 40 years), it will not be very useful except for a few specific things. For example, all current crypto is likely not really threatened, because you would need, for example, a 12k bit QC for 4096bit RSA and you need to run some complex calculations on it while maintaining coherence. Currently, they can do this for 3
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People are quick to point out that, for certain problems, quantum computers can theoretically achieve an exponential speedup over classical ones. They are not quick to point out that the difficulty (and expense) of maintaining coherence scales with the size of the system. If the order of the difficulty increase is greater or equal to the order of the quantum speedup, you don't gain anything.
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Indeed. Currently, it looks very much like the effort to do quantum computations scales exponentially in the bits and the computation length. That may be why the record for factorization using an actual full quantum computation is still 12 (not 12 bits, 12 being factored).