Quantum computers will not be general-purpose machines, though. They will be able to solve some calculations that are completely intractable for current computers and dramatically speed up processing for others. But many of the things they excel at are niche problems, and they will not replace conventional computers for the vast majority of tasks.
That means the ability to benefit from this revolution will be highly uneven, which prompted analysts at McKinsey to investigate who the early winners could be in a new report. They identified the pharmaceutical, chemical, automotive, and financial industries as those with the most promising near-term use cases.
The authors take care to point out that making predictions about quantum computing is hard because many fundamental questions remain unanswered; for instance, the relative importance of the quantity and quality of qubits or whether there can be practical uses for early devices before they achieve fault tolerance.
Warp drive. Site-to-site transporter technology. A vast network of interstellar wormholes that take us to bountiful alien worlds. Beyond a hefty holiday wish-list, the ideas presented to us in sci-fi franchises like Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” have inspired countless millions to dream of a time when humans have used technology to rise above the everyday limits of nature, and explore the universe.
But to guarantee the shortest path to turning at least some of these ideas into genuine scientific breakthroughs, we need to push ideas like general relativity to the breaking point. Tractor beams, one of the most exotic ideas proposed by the genre that involves manipulating space-time to pull or push objects at a distance, take us beyond the everyday paradigm of science, to the very edge of theoretical physics. And, a team of scientists examined how they might work in a recent study shared on a preprint server.
“In researching sci-fi ideas like tractor beams, the goal is to push and try to find a demarcation point where something more is needed, like quantum gravity,” said Sebastian Schuster, a scientist with a doctorate in mathematical physics from the Charles University of Prague, in an interview with IE. And, in finding out if tractor beams can work, we might also uncover even more exotic forces, like quantum gravity. So strap in.
Over the centuries, we have learned to put information into increasingly durable and useful form, from stone tablets to paper to digital media. Beginning in the 1980s, researchers began theorizing about how to store the information inside a quantum computer, where it is subject to all sorts of atomic-scale errors. By the 1990s they had found a few methods, but these methods fell short of their rivals from classical (regular) computers, which provided an incredible combination of reliability and efficiency.
Now, in a preprint posted on November 5, Pavel Panteleev and Gleb Kalachev of Moscow State University have shown that — at least, in theory — quantum information can be protected from errors just as well as classical information can. They did it by combining two exceptionally compatible classical methods and inventing new techniques to prove their properties.
“It’s a huge achievement by Pavel and Gleb,” said Jens Eberhardt of the University of Wuppertal in Germany.
The world we experience is governed by classical physics. How we move, where we are, and how fast we’re going are all determined by the classical assumption that we can only exist in one place at any one moment in time.
But in the quantum world, the behavior of individual atoms is governed by the eerie principle that a particle’s location is a probability. An atom, for instance, has a certain chance of being in one location and another chance of being at another location, at the same exact time.
When particles interact, purely as a consequence of these quantum effects, a host of odd phenomena should ensue. But observing such purely quantum mechanical behavior of interacting particles amid the overwhelming noise of the classical world is a tricky undertaking.
Scientists have come closer than ever before to creating a laboratory-scale imitation of a black hole that emits Hawking radiation, the particles predicted to escape black holes due to quantum mechanical effects.
The black hole analogue, reported in Nature Physics1, was created by trapping sound waves using an ultra cold fluid. Such objects could one day help resolve the so-called black hole ‘information paradox’ — the question of whether information that falls into a black hole disappears forever.
The physicist Stephen Hawking stunned cosmologists 40 years ago when he announced that black holes are not totally black, calculating that a tiny amount of radiation would be able to escape the pull of a black hole2. This raised the tantalising question of whether information might escape too, encoded within the radiation.
The fundamental forces of physics govern the matter comprising the Universe, yet exactly how these forces work together is still not fully understood. The existence of Hawking radiation — the particle emission from near black holes — indicates that general relativity and quantum mechanics must cooperate. But directly observing Hawking radiation from a black hole is nearly impossible due to the background noise of the Universe, so how can researchers study it to better understand how the forces interact and how they integrate into a “Theory of Everything”?
According to Haruna Katayama, a doctoral student in Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, since researchers cannot go to the Hawking radiation, Hawking radiation must be brought to the researchers. She has proposed a quantum circuit that acts as a black hole laser, providing a lab-bench black hole equivalent with advantages over previously proposed versions. The proposal was published on Sept. 27 Scientific Reports.
“In this study, we devised a quantum-circuit laser theory using an analogue black hole and a white hole as a resonator,” Katayama said.
The universe is governed by two sets of seemingly incompatible laws of physics – there’s the classical physics we’re used to on our scale, and the spooky world of quantum physics on the atomic scale. MIT physicists have now observed the moment atoms switch from one to the other, as they form intriguing “quantum tornadoes.”
Things that seem impossible to our everyday understanding of the world are perfectly possible in quantum physics. Particles can essentially exist in multiple places at once, for instance, or tunnel through barriers, or share information across vast distances instantly.
These and other odd phenomena can arise as particles interact with each other, but frustratingly the overarching world of classical physics can interfere and make it hard to study these fragile interactions. One way to amplify quantum effects is to cool atoms right down to a fraction above absolute zero, creating a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that can exhibit quantum properties on a larger, visible scale.
From the cosmic microwave background to Feynman diagrams — what are the underlying rules that work to create patterns of action, force and consequence that make up our universe? Brian’s new book “Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe” is available now: https://geni.us/clegg. Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/RZB95znAGRE
Brian Clegg will explore the phenomena that make up the very fabric of our world by examining ten essential sequenced systems. From diagrams that show the deep relationships between space and time to the quantum behaviours that rule the way that matter and light interact, Brian will show how these patterns provide a unique view of the physical world and its fundamental workings.
Brian Clegg was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, UK, and attended the Manchester Grammar School, then read Natural Sciences (specialising in experimental physics) at Cambridge University. After graduating, he spent a year at Lancaster University where he gained a second MA in Operational Research, a discipline developed during the Second World War to apply mathematics and probability to warfare and since widely applied to business problem solving. Brian now concentrates on writing popular science books, with topics ranging from infinity to ‘how to build a time machine.’ He has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous magazines and newspapers, including Nature, BBC Focus, BBC History, Good Housekeeping, The Times, The Observer, Playboy, The Wall Street Journal and Physics World.
This talk was recorded on 28 September 2021.
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COUNTDOWN TO RELEASE: Here comes the next and final installment in The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series ― The Omega Singularity: Universal Mind & The Fractal Multiverse ― which is now available to pre-order as a Kindle eBook on Amazon. In this final book of the series, we discuss a number of perspectives on quantum cosmology, computational physics, theosophy and eschatology. How could dimensionality be transcended yet again? What is the fractal multiverse? What is the ultimate destiny of our universe? Why does it matter to us? What is the Omega Singularity? These are some of the questions addressed in this concluding volume of my eBook series.
This final book V of The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series is an admittedly highly speculative theoretical work where we’ll be testing the limits of our imagination envisioning the prospects of our distant future and the deepest secrets of hyperreality. In our fractal, computational Omniverse (all multiversal structure combined, all that is) one may assume that an infinitely large number of civilizational minds, syntellects, have followed or will follow a path, similar to ours, in their evolutionary processes. At the highest level of existence and perceptual experience, that we can rightfully call ‘Dimensionality of Hypermind’, universal minds would form some sort of multiversal network of minds, layer after layer seemingly ad infinitum.
The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series is a collection of books by evolutionary cyberneticist and philosopher Alex M. Vikoulov on the ultimate nature of reality, consciousness, the physics of time, computational physics, philosophy of mind, foundations of quantum physics, the technological singularity, transhumanism, posthumanism, the impending phase transition of humanity, the simulation hypothesis, economic theory, the extended Gaia theory, transcendental metaphysics and God. If you’re eager to familiarize with probably the most advanced ontological framework to date or if you’re already familiar with the Syntellect Hypothesis which, with this series, is now presented to you as the full-fledged Cybernetic Theory of Mind, you should get this book five of the series which corresponds to Part V of The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution.
The uncertainty principle, first introduced by Werner Heisenberg in the late 1920’s, is a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics. In the quantum world, particles like the electrons that power all electrical product can also behave like waves. As a result, particles cannot have a well-defined position and momentum simultaneously. For instance, measuring the momentum of a particle leads to a disturbance of position, and therefore the position cannot be precisely defined.
