cormack12
Gold Member
Dr. Michio Kaku on the new world of quantum computing
Source: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article...o-kaku-on-the-new-world-of-quantum-computing/
...more at link, well worth a read
Everything,’ he says, ‘everything about the economy, medicine, warfare – everything is going to be turned upside down.’ Why? Because quantum computers are unimaginably more powerful than the digital sort.
Digital computers work with ‘bits’, noughts and ones, ‘a very crude approximation of reality’. But quantum computers use the qubit – the state of an atom – as a unit of computation. As we know from quantum theory, atoms can point up or down, but also spin: ‘There are infinitely more states than just zeros and ones… the digital revolution will look like an abacus.’ To give a sense of how fast that scales, in 2019 Google reported that its 53-qubit Sycamore computer could solve in 200 seconds a mathematical problem that would take the fastest digital computer 10,000 years to finish. Last year, IBM unveiled a 433-qubit quantum computer. The 1,121-qubit follow-up is due any day, and it hopes to have a 4,000-qubit version working by 2025.
That means, if I understand him rightly, that quantum computers will allow us to do chemistry without chemicals. Everything from batteries to vaccines is currently invented, effectively, by trial and error: but if you can accurately simulate chemical reactions, you don’t need bubbling flasks. The secrets of everything from human ageing to photosynthesis (a near 100 per cent efficient quantum process that, Kaku reminds us in tones of wonder, takes place at room temperature) can be unlocked.
Pleasingly, some of the first and most important possibilities he sets out are `very material ones. The century-old Haber Process for making fertiliser out of atmospheric nitrogen has made it possible to feed billions who would not otherwise be alive today, but it consumes fully 2 per cent of all the world’s energy. Quantum computing could give us the ability to ‘fix’ nitrogen without the huge temperatures and pressures required – ushering in a new green revolution.
In the medical domain, quantum computers will be able to analyse how drugs work at a molecular level, model and test new ones without ever going near a patient, and analyse the vast and noisy datasets that will allow medics to spot the outbreak of a new pandemic long before humans could. Kaku envisions quantum computers sniffing out cancer ‘years to decades before tumours form’ with routine ‘liquid biopsies’ performed by a ‘smart toilet’ in your home.
Quantum computers may indeed get round to abolishing disease, hunger and global warming. But, even leaving aside the ‘control problem’ when quantum computers give the development of AI a hyper-speed boost, the first thing that they’ll do along the way is to make it possible to break by ‘brute force’ (i.e. sheer computational welly) every form of encryption on the planet.
Source: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article...o-kaku-on-the-new-world-of-quantum-computing/
...more at link, well worth a read
Everything,’ he says, ‘everything about the economy, medicine, warfare – everything is going to be turned upside down.’ Why? Because quantum computers are unimaginably more powerful than the digital sort.
Digital computers work with ‘bits’, noughts and ones, ‘a very crude approximation of reality’. But quantum computers use the qubit – the state of an atom – as a unit of computation. As we know from quantum theory, atoms can point up or down, but also spin: ‘There are infinitely more states than just zeros and ones… the digital revolution will look like an abacus.’ To give a sense of how fast that scales, in 2019 Google reported that its 53-qubit Sycamore computer could solve in 200 seconds a mathematical problem that would take the fastest digital computer 10,000 years to finish. Last year, IBM unveiled a 433-qubit quantum computer. The 1,121-qubit follow-up is due any day, and it hopes to have a 4,000-qubit version working by 2025.
That means, if I understand him rightly, that quantum computers will allow us to do chemistry without chemicals. Everything from batteries to vaccines is currently invented, effectively, by trial and error: but if you can accurately simulate chemical reactions, you don’t need bubbling flasks. The secrets of everything from human ageing to photosynthesis (a near 100 per cent efficient quantum process that, Kaku reminds us in tones of wonder, takes place at room temperature) can be unlocked.
Pleasingly, some of the first and most important possibilities he sets out are `very material ones. The century-old Haber Process for making fertiliser out of atmospheric nitrogen has made it possible to feed billions who would not otherwise be alive today, but it consumes fully 2 per cent of all the world’s energy. Quantum computing could give us the ability to ‘fix’ nitrogen without the huge temperatures and pressures required – ushering in a new green revolution.
In the medical domain, quantum computers will be able to analyse how drugs work at a molecular level, model and test new ones without ever going near a patient, and analyse the vast and noisy datasets that will allow medics to spot the outbreak of a new pandemic long before humans could. Kaku envisions quantum computers sniffing out cancer ‘years to decades before tumours form’ with routine ‘liquid biopsies’ performed by a ‘smart toilet’ in your home.
Quantum computers may indeed get round to abolishing disease, hunger and global warming. But, even leaving aside the ‘control problem’ when quantum computers give the development of AI a hyper-speed boost, the first thing that they’ll do along the way is to make it possible to break by ‘brute force’ (i.e. sheer computational welly) every form of encryption on the planet.
