I have threatened to write a piece on the emerging importance of quantum physics. As scale shrinks down to the nano level in field after field, results are impacted by sub-atomic level interactions (quantum level) versus traditional Newtonian Physics (force, gravity,etc). While there remain considerable unknowns in Quantum Physics, there are also significant opportunities from solving some of them.
The most fundamental units of matter, quanta, are only clouds of "probability waves" with indeterminate location. That is, we can’t say with certainty where an electron in orbit around and atom is. We can only say probabilistically where it might be. However, simply by observing, the waves collapse into a fixed particle at a fixed location. There is considerable debate over what observations actually cause this collapse. A basic example of this (and the unknowns about the field) include the fact that it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of a photon (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). It does not have a given position (more of a probability of being somewhere) until it is observed. So, since everything is made up of atoms and atoms are characterized by quanta, it could be argued that reality is only that which we observe since it is only our observation that creates a determinant result. Einstein disagreed with many of the early pioneers in quantum physics, making statements such as "I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements…I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it." At this extreme, this literally means that you "create your own reality" each day! The popular indy movie, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, takes such a mystical approach in explaining all of this.
The holy grail of this space is the creation of a Quantum Computer. While traditonal computing manipulate bits (0 or 1), quantum computers leverage superposition to exponentially process more possible states than traditional computers. The National Security Agency is closely monitoring this space as a Quantum Computer would be capable of breaking nearly every known security algorythm in short order (RSA, ElGamal and Diffie-Hellman). Our company, D-Wave, is part way down the path towards this goal though it has quite a ways to go.
Quantum encryption is another, more immediate, opportunity resulting from Quantum physics. There are several start-ups, including Nucrypt (www.nucrypt.net), which is a spinout from Northwestern run by a friend of mine, V Srikant. This field uses entanglement to establish secure transmission. Should anyone eavesdrop on a communication in the optical fiber, their observation would leave a trace.
Lastly, materials behave differently at the quantum level. This impacts how we can get materials to do what we want, when we want.
Enough musings about the Quantum world. Feel free to jump in, and if any of you can figure this stuff out, let me know!
i think this requires the invention of a fiber optical databus as well as processor… it is impossible to achieve such a computational status if the speed of a machine is inconsistent.
ill see if i can find it… but there is a filippenko equation somewhere that is along the lines of this.
You are correct. There are a lot of challenges around both consistently getting the “computer” to execute (and knowing how/why) as well as the infrastructure issues around databus’s, clocks, etc. But if someone does figure this stuff out, Katie bar the door…
i imagine that encoding and decoding the data in this situation would be mind boggling.