QuantumComputers.com

In 1900 Max Planck started a revolution in physics by proposing that energy was not continuous but came in indivisible chunks he called quanta. A few years later Einstein boldly stated that the same applied to light. “Boldly” because we had known for many years that light behaved like a wave. Quantum mechanics was born.

At that time Kitty Hawk was still to make it’s first flight. Today, over a hundred years later, we’ve put a man on the moon, mapped out the human genome, invented the computer, and much much more. And yet we are still as confused about the dual nature of light as ever. By 1927 the fundamental theory of Quantum Mechanics was fully formed. It predicted some wild and crazy stuff (action at a distance!), but over the decades, as scientists have come up with one brilliant experiment after another in their attempt to confirm these predictions, QM is still batting a 1000. It has been flawless at telling us the way things are. The only problem is, we have absolutely no idea why they are the way they are.

To summarize – this is the current state of affairs. It appears that at the subatomic level, nothing happens unless it is observed. The idea of stuff having it’s own independant reality is a fiction. Before anything can actually be there must be an observer to observe it. This is the Niels Bohr (Copenhagen) interpretation which has become the the standard QM philosophy. It says that it makes absolutely no sense to even ask the question “what is happening?” (eg. what is a particle’s psotion and momentum) when nobody is looking. And trust me… that’s not because we aren’t smart enough to figure it out. It’s because we have figured it out! And the answer is that nothing (as in no particular state) is happening. All the different states exist simultaneously as potential until somebody looks.

The problem with this is the question “What constitutes an observation?”. The camera going click? The lab assistant looking at a picture? The lab assistants supervisor walking in? The neurons firing in their brains?

To illustrate just how desperate the situation is, consider this. The only viable alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation to gain any traction at all in the 90 odd years that have passed since, is the “Many Worlds Theory”. This states that anytime anything (anything!) happens anywhere in the universe, the entire universe splits into 2. That’s right, 2 separate and forever distinct universes, each with a different possible outcome to the even that just took place. For example, when an electron emits a photon or doesn’t, well… it does both – each possibility in it’s own universe.

Now you might think this is a bit crazy, but get this – these are supposed to be 2 very real, actual universes! In other words, the only way to get around the tha fact that QM is telling us that things do not have their own reality independant from an observer is to assume that every possible thing that could happen really does happen – in different universes.

Leading theoretical scientists support this – today! Such are the lengths that we, mankind, will go to in order to cling so desperately to our intuitive belief that things really do exist.

I have a different proposal. Yes things do exist… but only as ‘presentations’. Nothing really exists. The system (if I may call it that) is there for the benefit of everything that participates in the system. Everything is summarized to the highest possible level in order to maximize efficiency. The fundamental building blocks are particles, but they are theoretical. They are only called into being when some smart ass gets really clever and figures out a way to look at them. When we look at the ocean we see a vast expanse of water with light reflecting off the waves. Those trillions upon trillions of water molecules don’t need to exist to create that picture. Hell, forget the Many Worlds Theory, even intuitive reality is way too inefficient!

Why create all those electrons? All that is needed is an electron PROTOTYPE. Afterall, every electron is absolutely identical. Only the context changes. You will never find a particular particle, be it an electron, proton, neutron, whatever that varies even the slightest little bit in it’s mass or any other distinguishing characteristic. When particles interact, physicists just assume all participants are destroyed, and new particles created, even if the new particles are of the same type as the particles that collided. This is because the new ones (of the same type) are identical in every way anyway.

There is only one photon, one proton, one electron. They exist as concepts only. When needed, when pressed by obstinate insisting physicists, specific instances are created.

When you see Marg Simpson doing up her beehive blue hair do, what do you think she has on under her dress? Seriously. Is she naked? Does she have panties? It’s silly to even ask right? Well, that’s exactly what our scientists will tell you about subatomic particles. Don’t bother even asking the question! You can talk about probabilities sure – probably panties, quite possible pink or maybe blue panties – these are probabilities, but until she actually lifts her skirt I can guarantee you she has NOTHING on under her dress because what stupid animation artist would bother creating something if it’s going to covered by a dress anyway?

Same goes for electrons. Same goes for water molecules. Same goes for the sound of falling trees.

Quantum Mechanics has already told us unequivically that nothing happens unless it is observed. Unless you agree with the Many Worlds stupidity (how could we make reality less efficient!), then I think we have to go with the Marg Simpson theory. And I’ll bet Homer will agree with me – there is only one electron!

Since I know that you dear reader are still clinging to this idea that reality is real in a physical kind of way, in the kind of way where everything really does exist all the time, and not only when it needs to exist because somebody is looking, and not only in a conceptual virtual ‘in the the brain’ kind of way, I will have one last crack at an explanation.

First a quick rant… hardly anyone actually knows what Bell’s Theorem or “Action at a Distance” is. This is despite the fact that this issue is at the core of our quest to expand the knowledge frontier and has been for over half a century. Making sense of this issue (once we finally do) will stand as one of the pinnacles, if not THE pinnacle, of the advancement of mankind (I should say “re-discovering” since this is nothing new). So why does hardly anyone know about it? Why is it not taught up front and center in every school? Quite simply it’s because our brain dead fucked up self righteous arrogant head up it’s ass society is too damn scared to admit to our children that there are some things we do not know, that we cannot test them on with a multiple choice question, that might just excite their little brains into some kind of creative tizzy that would then require daily doses of ritalin and psychotherapy sessions to correct the error of their ways. I could go on, but I suspect you get my point. We prefer to mold our kids into a couple of rigid shapes (round or square) then slap a grade on their foreheads and ship them out into society to fill our stupid holes. And god forbid any child that wanders from our chosen and highly tested path – they get slapped with a great big DUNCE sticker, denied further education, and forced to pay penance for the error of their ways.

Ok so Bell’s Theorem – basically it said if you change something ‘here’ it can cause an INSTANTANEOUS change ‘there’.

That’s it. If you want to more detail I suggest you Google it or get any book on Quantum mechanics. The real deal is what this implies, how it can be. There have been a few suggestions – if you care about this stuff you can look into it and come up with your own suggestion, since no-one really has a clue how this can be (what better way to excite our kids… oh wait – how could we test them on their answers? Heaven’s no – we better not try that!).

So far ‘we’ have come up with 4 alternative explanations.

1. Superdetermination (everything since the beginning of time is pre-ordained – no free will).
2. Many World’s Theory (everytime ANYTHING happens the entire universe splits into two).
3. We are not allowed to ask.
4. Reality does not exist beyond the bounds of an observation.

I go for a combination of 3 and 4. We are allowed to ask what’s under Marj Simpsons dress, but it’s a silly question because we know thare’s nothing there unless she actually takes it off. Therefore we can only talk about probabilities (she probably has a pair of legs and maybe pink panties, or red, or white, or maybe even no panties and a blue bush, or maybe even a 1964 Cadillac Convertible – not likely, but since she is animated, it is not impossible. Sound silly? Anyone familiar with the language of Quantum Mechanics will tell you that such ‘language’ is very very familiar! Substitute “Marj’s dress” with “the photon’s polarization” and “pink panties” with “270 degrees” and “a 1964 cadillac” with “located in another galaxy”, etc. and the two discussions are logically identical.

What does that tell you about reality?

From Phys.org

Dr André Carvalho. Photo by Dr Tim Wetherell.
(Phys.org) — The main technical difficulty in building a quantum computer could soon be the thing that makes it possible to build one, according to new research from The Australian National University.
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Dr André Carvalho, from the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology and the Research School of Physics and Engineering, part of the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, worked with collaborators from Brazil and Spain to come up with a new proposal for quantum computers. In his research, Dr Carvalho showed that disturbance – or noise – that prevents a quantum computer from operating accurately could become the very thing that makes it work.

“Most people have experienced some kind of computer error in their life – a file that doesn’t open, a CD that can’t be read – but we have ways to correct them. We also know how to correct errors in a quantum computer but we need to keep the noise level really, really low to do that,” he said.

“That’s been a problem, because to build a quantum computer you have to go down to atomic scales and deal with microscopic systems, which are extremely sensitive to noise.”

Surprisingly, the researchers found that the solution was to add even more noise to the system.
“We found that with the additional noise you can actually perform all the steps of the computation, provided that you measure the system, keep a close eye on it and intervene,” Dr Carvalho said.

“Because we have no control on the outcomes of the measurement – they are totally random – if we just passively wait it would take an infinite amount of time to extract even a very simple computation.

“It’s like the idea that if you let a monkey type randomly on a typewriter, eventually a Shakespearean play could come out. In principle, that can happen, but it is so unlikely that you’d have to wait forever.
“However, imagine that whenever the monkey types the right character in a particular position, you protect that position, so that any other typing there will not affect the desired character. This is sort of what we do in our scheme. By choosing smart ways to detect the random events, we can drive the system to implement any desired computation in the system in a finite time.”

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From Idiocracy.com

Variables are never changed – rather, new copies are created with new values and this creates Time (the string of values for the variable left in the wake of execution). When the value returns to an old value instance, so does that particular cycle of Time and execution then returns to that spot. All things being equal, if Time is advanced at that level by one tick, than the next value in the value chain will simply be re-used. This is the most efficient form of execution since it does not require any variables to be actually changed – all that changes is a simple Time pointer (the clock!) and, by definition, one variable need to change in order to advance the path of execution. However that single ‘tick’ can change the value of millions of variables simultaneously since they are all referenced by the Time (the clock) which has changed. The reason at least one variable (in addition to the clock) must change is because if nothing at all changes then Time does not advance in the first place.

Kapish?

“This sentence is a lie”

That sentence is why science is forever doomed to fail in its attempts to explain reality – the universe is based upon a self referential paradox that requires an observation (time…. consciousness) to become manifest. That sentence has one variable and two values – True and False, and it is impossible for them both to be current at the same time. It takes an observation and memory to perceive the paradox.

While we’re on the subject, some ancient cultures (Mayan?) held sun festivals where they gathered in number to observe the rising sun in the belief that they had a duty to do this in order to keep the cosmic wheels of the universe turning – in other words they believed that it was their job to observe the sunrise in order to ensure that the sun kept rising! Makes you wonder just how advanced they were when you consider we have just stumbled upon this weird feature of Quantum Mechanics that stipulates that an observation is required in order to create an event. I can just imagine their reaction if they were around today… “Well done children! My but you are so clever! Now run along and play with your toys outside – we have work to do – we have to ensure that Jupiter and Venus make love tonight otherwise all hell is gonna break loose!”.

From scientificcomputing.com

Courtesy of Quitemad

Researchers have conducted a work on the use of two families of Topological Quantum Codes for error correction in quantum systems. One of the most important achievements has consisted in beating the previously known qubit-error-rate by 75 percent. This opens the way for future improvements.

This research has been coordinated by Miguel Angel Martin-Delgado, Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and QUITEMAD Coordinator, along with Hector Bombin and Helmut Kraztgraber, researchers of the QUITEMAD Scientific Consortium, together with an international group of scientists from Switzerland (R. Andrist) and Japan (M. Ozheki). It has been conducted with the access to the most powerful supercomputer in Spain — Magerit-2 — at the Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid (CeSViMa.), and supercomputers in U. Texas and ETH (Zurich). The result of this research places scientists  one step closer to the success of quantum computation and closer to the major challenge — in the long term — of building large quantum computers.

The study has been published in the Physical Review X journal (Americam Physical Society) and also widely commented by Prof. Daniel Gottesman, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada, and also researcher at the Perimeter Institute, and colleagues who focus this work on the study of both topological toric and color codes, determining the degree of protection provided against the more generic form of errors.

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From TechnologyReview.com.

Quantum tunnelling had always been thought too complex to simulate on today’s simple quantum computers. Now a new approach to quantum computing has changed that and opens the door to more complex simulations

The exploitation of quantum weirdness for computing is one of the great goals of modern physics. It’s promise is dramatic for a wide range of number-crunching tasks.

But quantum computers have another trick up their sleeves which is sometimes forgotten–the ability to simulate other quantum systems. Physicists have already shown how quantum computers of various types can simulate phenomenon such as quantum phase transitions and the dynamics of entanglement–things that classical computers simply cannot handle.

There is one quantum phenomenon, however, that has never been simulated–tunnelling. This is the ability of quantum particles to cross a barrier without seeming to have passed through it.

There’s no reason in principle why quantum computers can’t simulate tunnelling. The problem is the complexity of the task.

The simulations performed so far have all involved so-called analogue processes which are relatively straightforward. The idea here is that the mathematical description of one system, its Hamiltonian, is exactly reproduced in another system.

So watching one system tells you exactly how the other would behave. This is known as analogue quantum particle simulation and it works well provided you can find systems that match in required way. Watching quantum phase transitions is good example because many systems share the same mathematical description.

For more complex problems, physicists have recently been thinking about another approach. The idea here is to break the mathematical system into different parts and simulate them separately. This is known as digital quantum particle simulation and it has huge potential for events that involve more than one object, such as quantum chemistry and tunneling.

The problem is the sheer complexity of these calculations, which require numerous quantum logic gates processing dozens of qubits. That’s always been beyond the state-of-the-art for quantum computing.

Earlier this year, however, Andrew Sornborger at the University of Georgia in Athens showed how  the case of a single particle tunnelling through a barrier could be made simple enough to simulate on today’s quantum computers. Such a demonstration would be the first example of a digital quantum simulation.

Read more….

Jeff Forshaw
From The Observer, Saturday 5 May 2012

Quantum computers are ever closer to becoming a reality, and when they arrive they will revolutionise computing power

A crystal of beryllium ions confined by a large magnetic field at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s quantum simulator. The outermost electron of each ion is a quantum bit (qubit), and here they are fluorescing blue, which indicates they are all in the same state.

Photograph: Britton/NIST

The reality of the universe in which we live is an outrage to common sense. Over the past 100 years, scientists have been forced to abandon a theory in which the stuff of the universe constitutes a single, concrete reality in exchange for one in which a single particle can be in two (or more) places at the same time. This is the universe as revealed by the laws of quantum physics and it is a model we are forced to accept – we have been battered into it by the weight of the scientific evidence. Without it, we would not have discovered and exploited the tiny switches present in their billions on every microchip, in every mobile phone and computer around the world. The modern world is built using quantum physics: through its technological applications in medicine, global communications and scientific computing it has shaped the world in which we live.

Although modern computing relies on the fidelity of quantum physics, the action of those tiny switches remains firmly in the domain of everyday logic. Each switch can be either “on” or “off”, and computer programs are implemented by controlling the flow of electricity through a network of wires and switches: the electricity flows through open switches and is blocked by closed switches. The result is a plethora of extremely useful devices that process information in a fantastic variety of ways.

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From Lanerreport.com

By Mark Green

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 4, 2012) — A team of theoretical physicists from the University of Kentucky and University of South Florida has taken a big step toward the development of practical “spintronics” based on graphene, which promises to make electronic devices smaller and much faster than today’s silicon-based technology.

The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, was led by Professor Madhu Menon at the UK Center for Computational Sciences and Sergey Lisenkov at the University of South Florida. Their findings were published today in Physical Review Letters.

Spin is a quantum mechanical property that has a binary directional value, either “up” or “down.” This is analogous to the “on/off” property that enables binary digital coding in modern computers. A key advantage to potential spintronics devices is that once the direction of the spin is set, no energy is required to keep it that way. Thus, data stored using spintronics will not disappear when the electric current stops.

An important step toward fabrication of spintronics (“the Holy Grail,” Menon says) is finding a semiconductor that has a net “spin” at room temperature. The biggest challenge is in finding a suitable material and figuring out how to set the spin. The UK-USF team showed that a flat sheet of pure carbon only one atom thick, called graphene, can be suitably engineered and used for this purpose when combined with atoms of the metallic element cobalt.

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From Nanowerk.com

(Nanowerk News) In the age of high-speed computing, the photon is king. However, producing the finely tuned particles of light is a complex and time-consuming process, until now.

Thanks to the work by a team of engineers led by Professor Amr Helmy of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, a novel solution has been identified that will make the production of special class of photons faster and easier.

Advanced computing technologies – such as ultra-secure communication systems and optical quantum computers – use light to quickly relay information. To enable these technologies to work, a photon – the smallest unit of energy – has to be tightly coupled with another photon. These are known as entangled photon pairs. The current means of production uses relatively bulky optical equipment in specialized labs. The photons are also extremely delicate to construct and are very sensitive to mechanical vibrations. This complexity and associated cost currently makes the use of this technology in homes or offices impracticable.
Professor Helmy’s team offers an innovative solution. These engineers have successfully designed a new integrated counterpart to the delicate laboratory equipment that could produce the entangled photon pairs using an integrated circuit. Ultimately, the entire production of the photons could be completed using a single chip. The team in Toronto along with their colleagues at the University of Waterloo and Universität Innsbruck, have tested the first generation of these devices. They reported their findings in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters (“Monolithic Source of Photon Pairs”).

“The research offers the prospect of unleashing the potential of the powerful and underutilized quantum technologies into the main stream commercial world, out of the lab,” explained Professor Helmy.

While other attempts at creating a chip-based solution didn’t permit the addition of other components, Professor Helmy’s team used a semiconductor chip that would function with the other existing equipment. This makes it possible to have all of the required components that traditionally exist in a laboratory be on the same chip.

Utilizing quantum optical computing will be key in solving extremely difficult computational problems, such as complex data sorting. Optical computers are much faster than any classical computer thanks to their ability to use advanced modern algorithms. Producing entangled pairs using this chip is a first and significant step towards making them commercially available and perhaps might lead to future quantum-optical gadgets.
Source: University of Toronto

The most transparent, lightweight and flexible material ever for conducting electricity has been invented by a team from the University of Exeter. Called GraphExeter, the material could revolutionise the creation of wearable electronic devices, such as clothing containing computers, phones and MP3 players.

GraphExeter could also be used for the creation of ‘smart’ mirrors or windows, with computerised interactive features. Since this material is also transparent over a wide light spectrum, it could enhance by more than 30% the efficiency of solar panels.
Adapted from graphene, GraphExeter is much more flexible than indium tin oxide (ITO), the main conductive material currently used in electronics. ITO is becoming increasingly expensive and is a finite resource, expected to run out in 2017.
These research findings are published in Advanced Materials, a leading journal in materials science.