Quantum Physics And Quantum Computers

[EllenMaksoud]

I am just asking this question here because I hope no one will openly laugh at me. Computers and I have a love/hate relationship. In the 80's, Basic was vaguely understandable, and this little brain had at least some facility with it. Now days, I just ask the computer to do things and sometimes it does, other times, not so much ...  It seems like Microsoft, Google, and Firefox are like a pack of rabid dogs tearing at a carcass. Our only hope is that many of the intruders into our lives seem to be folk who are not old enough to vote, and have only ever experienced gaming in real life. I wonder what some of them would do if they found a freshly turned out Potato in the garden?

 

At least there is enough understanding to continue with my blogging, Facebook, and writing Feminist Science Fiction. Yes, I know that the government, google, and every marketing person in the world are just rubbing their hands in glee anticipating ways to intrude in the lives of people like me and are determined to wreak havoc there.

 

So, today the Quantum Computer is big news. Does anyone understand more about this than the video shows?

 

http://io9.com/a-sneak-peak-inside-google-and-nasas-new-quantum-ai-la-1444007785

[thesometimesaint]

Not much more. But the important thing to remember in the Quantum Universe of computing is that two bits of information can exist in the same place at the same time. Which completely upsets our general Newtonian physical universe view. 

[Robert F. Smith]

I am just asking this question here because I hope no one will openly laugh at me. Computers and I have a love/hate relationship. In the 80's, Basic was vaguely understandable, and this little brain had at least some facility with it. Now days, I just ask the computer to do things and sometimes it does, other times, not so much ...  It seems like Microsoft, Google, and Firefox are like a pack of rabid dogs tearing at a carcass. Our only hope is that many of the intruders into our lives seem to be folk who are not old enough to vote, and have only ever experienced gaming in real life. I wonder what some of them would do if they found a freshly turned out Potato in the garden?

 

At least there is enough understanding to continue with my blogging, Facebook, and writing Feminist Science Fiction. Yes, I know that the government, google, and every marketing person in the world are just rubbing their hands in glee anticipating ways to intrude in the lives of people like me and are determined to wreak havoc there.

 

So, today the Quantum Computer is big news. Does anyone understand more about this than the video shows?

 

http://io9.com/a-sneak-peak-inside-google-and-nasas-new-quantum-ai-la-1444007785

I don't understand quantum theory or quantum computing, but here are some more items to try to wrap your head around:

 

“Quantum Teleportation Between Atomic Systems Over Long Distances,” ScienceDaily.com, June 6, 2013, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130606140844.htm

 

“Do We Live in a Computer Simulation Run by Our Descendants? Researchers Say Idea Can Be Tested,” ScienceDaily, Dec 10, 2012, online at  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121210132752.htm , re supercomputers using a technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics.

 

Cary Huang, “The Scale of the Universe 2,” online at http://htwins.net/scale2/ .  Takes one all the way down to the string or quantum foam level.  Astonishing and humbling.

 

Ricard, Matthieu, and Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet (Crown, 2001).

Edited November 21, 2013 by Robert F. Smith

[EllenMaksoud]

 

I don't understand quantum theory or quantum computing, but here are some more items to try to wrap your head around:

 

“Quantum Teleportation Between Atomic Systems Over Long Distances,” ScienceDaily.com, June 6, 2013, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130606140844.htm

 

“Do We Live in a Computer Simulation Run by Our Descendants? Researchers Say Idea Can Be Tested,” ScienceDaily, Dec 10, 2012, online at  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121210132752.htm , re supercomputers using a technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics.

 

Cary Huang, “The Scale of the Universe 2,” online at http://htwins.net/scale2/ .  Takes one all the way down to the string or quantum foam level.  Astonishing and humbling.

 

Ricard, Matthieu, and Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet (Crown, 2001).

 

I have been thinking about writing a story where certain beings can use 16 dimensions as is postulated by someone on the internet as it shows up when I search for it.   I think wiki calls it super-string theory. And, I think in time Science will prove the existence of God

 

For now it looks like this Quantum Computer is behaving like a bad chip that Intel made. If they can study it enough to be able to predict how it will act, then they may have something. One researcher told me is that brain Neurons are vaguely similar to a transistor, but there are lots of different connections in each synapse, not just two. I read the other day that they had gotten this or a similar processor and memory to hold its data for 19 hours.

 

http://greenbananablog.org/2010/01/brain-has-more-connections-than-particles-in-universe-100b-neurons-x-10000-connections/

 

I actually do not belief that statement.

[webbles]

I am just asking this question here because I hope no one will openly laugh at me. Computers and I have a love/hate relationship. In the 80's, Basic was vaguely understandable, and this little brain had at least some facility with it. Now days, I just ask the computer to do things and sometimes it does, other times, not so much ...  It seems like Microsoft, Google, and Firefox are like a pack of rabid dogs tearing at a carcass. Our only hope is that many of the intruders into our lives seem to be folk who are not old enough to vote, and have only ever experienced gaming in real life. I wonder what some of them would do if they found a freshly turned out Potato in the garden?

 

At least there is enough understanding to continue with my blogging, Facebook, and writing Feminist Science Fiction. Yes, I know that the government, google, and every marketing person in the world are just rubbing their hands in glee anticipating ways to intrude in the lives of people like me and are determined to wreak havoc there.

 

So, today the Quantum Computer is big news. Does anyone understand more about this than the video shows?

 

http://io9.com/a-sneak-peak-inside-google-and-nasas-new-quantum-ai-la-1444007785

 

The D-Wave computer that the video talks about might actually not be a quantum computer.  This blog post http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 has quite a lot of discussion over whether it is a quantum computer.

 

The main thing is that the D-Wave says that it can do quantum annealing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing) which allows optimization problems to be calculated faster than using classical annealing.  What annealing does is find the minimum solution to a particular function.  If you design a problem/function (cheapest route between most number of cities in least number of days) and then toss in all the data (cites, cost, travel type, speed, etc), it will find you what you want.  We already have classical annealing solutions (one is called Quantum Monte Carlo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Monte_Carlo, which simulates a quantum computer) that can solve these problems but because these problems are NP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP_%28complexity%29), as the amount of data increases, the amount of time required increases polynomially.  Quantum annealing will make these problems no longer polynomially, so more data can be thrown into the problem without adding to much time.

 

D-Wave's problem is that even though it does appear to perform quantum annealing, there are classical annealing algorithms that are faster than it.

[telnetd]

I am just asking this question here because I hope no one will openly laugh at me. Computers and I have a love/hate relationship.

 

This topic is more relevant on another forum. Not sure why

you would post it here.

 

Gail

[Calm]

This topic is more relevant on another forum. Not sure why

you would post it here.

 

Gail

Because this is where she hangs out and it is the Social Forum so why not post about something that interest her?  

[Tacenda]

Because this is where she hangs out and it is the Social Forum so why not post about something that interest her?

Good lookin out for Ellen, this is Social. If I were to get the ability to be able to start topics, mine would be some that would never come close to Quantum anything.

[EllenMaksoud]

This topic is more relevant on another forum. Not sure why

you would post it here.

 

Gail

You are brand new here, so you would know this how?