Saturday, November 20, 2004

Re: Quantum Computing??

Welcome back. Good to have both Hrishi and you blogging again.

Is this really possible, I really doubt it. For long scientists have been saying that at the quantum level, causality is broken, that is just too dumb! For example, the whole experiment regarding Schroedinger's Cat is ridiculous! The claim of an event happening only when our eyes fall on it is just too goddamned subjective!!

From what I've read, it looks like the laws of phsyics literally break down at the quantum level. I don't see any reason to dismiss it. There is some sort of incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity. And physists are trying to make sense of it all with "string theory". They are trying to unify everything from the very big to the very small. That's why sometimes it is called "the theory of everything".

True we don't know yet exactly what happens at the quantum level, but to infer from that a truly chaotic view of it is absurd. How can something be two different things at the same instant of time?? I'm perplexed, someone explain!

As you say, unlike digital computers today where a bit is either on or off, qu-bits can be 0 and 1 at the same time. It's based on the fundamental ambiguity inherent at the quantum level. They key to quantum computers is that one would present it with a problem and a way to test the answer. Through some disambiguating process (don't ask me to explain how!) the failing answers cancel each others out and only the one that passes the test remains. This is why it's so effective in cryptography.

I've been wondering for sometime if something like quantum computing is possible, it's very base seems shaky! True I'm no physics expert, but still I can't accept a contradiction as the basis to a scientific theory.

And if you think about it quantum computers will definitely be an eventuality. The transistors are getting pretty damn small already. By 2020 they will reach atom size. And at that point we will have no other choice but to deal with quantum mechanics.

I dunno if that appeased you in anyway (I'm guessing probably not!) but that's how I understand it.

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