Quantum computing is like Forrest Gump‘s a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to find. Quantum phenomena – the behavior of matter and energy at atomic and atomic levels – are not certain, one thing or another. It’s the faintest clouds of possibility or, more likely, possibility. When one observes a quantum system, it loses its quantity and “collapses” into certainty.
Quantum phenomena are mysterious and often controversial. This makes quantum computing difficult to understand. People naturally reach out to what they know to try to explain the strange, and quantum computing often means using binary computers as an analogy. But explaining quantum computing in this way leads to a lot of confusion, because at a basic level the two are different animals.
This problem reflects the mistaken belief that familiar metaphors are more useful than unfamiliar ones when describing new technologies. Sometimes the opposite approach is more effective. The the revival of metaphor it should match the novelty found.
The distinction between quantum computers requires a strange analogy. As a communications researcher those who study technologyI believe that quantum computers can be understood as kaleidoscopes.
Digital Certainty vs. Quantum Probabilities
The gap between understanding classical and quantum computers is a great chasm. Early computers store and process information through transistors, which are electronic devices that assume binary, deterministic states: one or zero, yes or no. Quantum computers, in contrast, handle information wisely at the atomic and subatomic level.
Early computers used electrical currents to sequentially open and close gates to write or control information. Information flows through circuits, triggering events through a series of switches that record information such as ones and zeros. Using binary math, bits are the foundation of all digital things, from the apps on your phone to your bank accounts and the Wi-Fi signals running through your home.
In contrast, quantum computers use changes in the mass of atoms, ions, electrons or photons. Quantum computers connect, or bind, so many particles that one change affects all the others. Then they introduce a confusing strategy, such as several stones being thrown into the pond at the same time. Some waves combine to form high peaks, while other waves combine to form peaks. Careful control of disruptive processes lead a quantum computer to the answer about the problem.
Astronomer Katie Mack explains the possibility of abundance.
Achieving a Quantum Leap, Theoretically
the term “a little” is a metaphor. The term suggests that when calculating, a computer can break down large information into smaller ones – information – that electronic devices such as transistors can easily process.
Using such metaphors has a cost, however. They are not perfect. Metaphors are incomplete analogies that transfer information from things people are familiar with to things they are working to understand. The small analogy ignores that the binary method does not deal with many types of particles at the same time, as one would normally do. In fact, all the components are the same.
The smallest unit in a quantum computer is called a quantum bit, or qubit. But transferring this analogy to quantum computing is less complicated than applying it to classical computers. Transferring a metaphor from one task to another it distorts the results.
A common definition of quantum computing is that while traditional computers can store or process zeros or ones in a transistor or other computational unit, quantum computers are said to store and handle both zeros and ones and anything in between at the same time. about above.
Superposition, however, does not store one number or zero or any other number at the same time. There is only hope that the values will be zero or one at the end of the calculation. This multiple possibility is different from the binary method of storing information.
Guided by the uncertainty principle of quantum physics, the probability that a qubit stores a one or a zero is like Schroedinger’s cat, which may be dead or alive, depending on when you see it. But two different values do not exist at the same time during superposition. It exists only as a possibility, and the observer cannot know when or how often those conditions existed before the end of the superlative.
Abandoning these difficulties to use traditional binary metaphors means accepting new metaphors to describe quantum computing.
Looking into Kaleidoscopes
The metaphor of a kaleidoscope is apt to describe quantum processes. Kaleidoscopes can create a variety of colors but in an orderly manner using a few colored glass beads, glass dividers and light. A kaleidoscope rotation enhances the effect, creating a seamless array of colors and timeless textures.
Appearance is not only changeable but cannot be changed. When you turn the kaleidoscope the other way around, the images are the same, but the exact shape of each shape or design is different as the beads are mixed together alternately. In other words, while the beads, light and glass can match the patterns shown before, these are not the same.
If you don’t have a kaleidoscope handy, this video is a good substitute.
Using the metaphor of a kaleidoscope, the answer that quantum computers provide – the last example – depends on when you stop the computer process. Quantum computing does not mean predicting the state of a given particle but using the mathematics of how the interactions of many particles in different states create patterns, called quantum correlations.
Each final solution is a solution to a given problem in a quantum computer, and what you get in a quantum computing operation is the probability that a particular configuration will occur.
New Illustrations for New Worlds
Illustrations make the unknown possible, accessible and available. Comparing the meaning of something strange or strange by extending an existing metaphor is as old as calling the edge of an ax its “bit” and its end its “butt”. These two metaphors take something we understand from everyday life, and apply it to technology that requires a unique explanation of what it does. Calling the edge of an ax “slight” indicates what it does, and adds a nuance that changes the object it is used for. When an ax creates or splits a tree, it needs to bite.
However, illustrations do more than just provide simple labels and explain new processes. The words people use to describe new ideas change over time, develop and take on a life of their own.
When you encounter different ideas, technologies or scientific phenomena, it is important to use new and interesting words as windows to open your mind and increase your understanding. Scientists and engineers who want to express new ideas would do well to look for primitives and metaphors—in other words, to think about words the way poets do.
Sorin Adam Matei and Associate Dean for Research at Purdue University. This article was reprinted from Discussion under a Creative Commons license. Read the book the first story.
#Quantum #Computers #Kaleidoscopes #Helping #Explain #Science #Technology
