QUANTUM COMPUTERS

QUANTUM COMPUTERS

Small Step for Human?

IMAGINE cruising at the speed of sound in an automatic car. Wait… did you just picture yourself handling the steering. At that speed, there is no way you could get the controls right unless it is guided by a set of precise algorithms wired in the car’s hard drive. In that case, you won’t even need to manage the wheel… the car will run on its own.

          This has been the desire future of the auto industry for several decades, but the modern computers, which have helped us achieve most scientific goals, are not even close to assessing the multiple possibilities that can arise on a busy street full of people, animals and self-driving cars. Chances are that such future cars will be conceptualised and realised based on quantum mechanics - the branches of science that opens up the world of multiple possibilities.

          The current state of technology is inept to solve quantum mechanics, which happens to take an alternative view of the world. It accounts for every possibility that you can possibly think of and also the ones that evade your imagination. It then assigns a probability to each of them. So, there’s always a chance of the most bizarre things existing in the quantum world like flying pigs and a frozen hell.

          But here’s the catch- quantum mechanics is the study of microscopic subatomic particles which are capable of breaking certain barriers that are impossible to breach, like say a ball. Quantum mechanics is based on the principle that such subatomic particles can exist in multiple states all at once and assume specific state, a specific characteristic only when tested or measured. The art of falling into a specific state or decoherence as they call it is due to the environmental factors. Since macroscopic objects are bigger and continuously bumping against these environmental factors they quickly attain a precise state.

          To illustrate this phenomenon, Erwin Schrodinger, a pioneer in the field of quantum mechanics, proposed a thought experiment. The experiment involves closing a cat in a box with a radioactive pare. If the particle. If the particle decays the cat dies, otherwise it survives. Since at any given time the particle can both be decaying and not decaying (and can attain multiple states unlike the cat) the fate of the cat can be decided only specific state.

          Many seem quite unconvinced with the multiple state theory of particles but even noted physicists maintain that quantum mechanics as a whole defies logic. You just have to get used to it because it does exist.

          Probably the phenomena can be better understood with Lukens and Friedman’s demonstration of the Schrodinger’s thought experiment. Instead of a cat, the physicists from the state University of New York used a conducting wire the size of a hair’s width and placed it in a magnetic field. Now, based on its alignment the current can either flow in researchers found that instead of simply flipping the direction upon alignment, the current flow was a mixture of both the possibilities at any given point?

          By  combining multiple possibilities quantum computers can perform multiple intensely complex calculating all machines, determine unique drug design utterly complicated machines, determine unique drug  designs, and  code sophisticated software for  diverse disciplines – traffic safety, speed of present day computers. The conventional computers store information as bits and use as bits and use 1 and 0 for coding, which has clearly changed the way we do things. By using quantum information or qubits, which can code for two different possibilities at once, the coding prowess will take a quantum leap.

           If with present day computers we can launch a satellite, design cars and buildings, synthesis drugs and manage global communications just think about the things that could be done with a faster more sophisticated computer!

          The road is long but we are slowly getting there. Only last year in June, researchers from Yale University demonstrated that the famous Schrodinger’s cat can exist in two separate boxes all at once. Meaning if two quantum particles that have interacted at any given point of time are changed by altering the behavior of the other through local action: this spooky science from a distance may hold the up the phenomena of entanglement to more than two boxes have a basic framework for quantum computers.

          One hindrance that remains is to solve for errors. Due to superposition, the subatomic particles can exist in multiple states. This may churn out different results and affect the efficiency of computers. Hence, 99% of the computing many new materials that can remain in a specific state for longer durations (of the order of a few microseconds for that would be required for information transfer in a quantum computer).