The computer that works when it's idle
Quantum computers get the answer without being turned on.
A striking new way to compute the answer of a mathematical problem sounds like a slacker's dream: you turn on your computer, program it to solve the problem, but then don't have to run the program. Provided you are using a quantum computer, you'll have a fair chance of getting the answer anyway.
Read the story here.
Comments
Amazing how quantum computing is evolving. Some day it will make possible to have quantum computers inside nanoassemblers. They might be as much powerfull as todayś computers.
Posted by: Marretoman | February 23, 2006 04:39 PM
If this quantum computer works by running and not running in all possible states and the answer from the program not running is derived by subtracting the impact of the not run program on it doesn't that leave just as many possible off states to sift through as there would be on states? wouldn't you then need to use normal sequential elimination to find the correct answer?
I find this whole quantum thing baffling to say the least. Are there any good sources that explain this side of quantum theory that they've manipulated
Posted by: Mike Seiler | February 25, 2006 07:53 PM
Is it magic? If this is true then making gold out of air should also be true. Am I thinking irrelevent?
Gokuldas
Posted by: Gokuldas | February 26, 2006 05:08 PM
I am struck by the apparent (amusing?) coincidences between the way the mind seems to work and the behavior of a quantum computer. One of the best ways to solve hang up points in problems is often to stop thinking about it. As is well known the answer to the stumbling point will often then appear by itself without further conscious work, i.e. the computer (mind) was working when "off". Likewise often when one is trying to recall some tidbit of information that is "on the tip of the tounge" the surest way to not recall it is to continue to try to recall it, i.e. the "watched pot" syndrome. Is the mind a sort of quantum computer?
Posted by: Peter Geiser | February 28, 2006 05:44 PM
A similar concept to ths one is explored quite deeply in Stephen Baxter's novel "Exultant"; the characters create a computer which consists of a bunch of FTL particles. You switch on the computer, it does its computation in as many hours/years/millenia as such a computation takes to do, then the answer arrives back at the start (of the time it took) and thus changes history by appearing at once, so the user has no memory of ever having run a program because that happened in an alternate universe/timeline; in the emergent timeline, the answer is already there when the user is just about to run the program. Cute.
Posted by: Dan Sutton | February 28, 2006 06:04 PM
Fascinating story. Too bad about "...in which the photon didn't pass through the black box, therebye increasing the probability of finding the answer." 'therebye' is, of course, not a word in English. Interesting how the editorial quality of Nature has declined in direct correlation to its opting to become yet another cog in the leftist-media propaganda machine. In your obsession to publish stories about Al Gore and global warming caused by greenhouse gases, have you negelected to obtain a spellchecker?
Posted by: Michael Brown | February 28, 2006 07:15 PM
There's no doubt that meanwhile we keep"observing" our knowledge will survive as a fractal one.
Maybe by approaching the whole picture the True will outcome.
Let's keep on our re-ligare.
Towards the End of Infance?
Posted by: Walter Döuek-Pirotte | February 28, 2006 07:23 PM
Pull the other one!
Nature is simply not as mad as this. Physicists who truly believe this illogical behaviour simply do not understand what is really happening. Nor do I claim to, but since the Standard Model is widely known to be wrong when applied to the real world, what is the point of using it to try to explain these quantum effects? The fact that use of this model results in such ludicrous deductions is the clearest indication that we have got something very badly wrong somewhere. Physicists need to accept this, and launch a programme to go right back to square one and develop a new Standard Model which is internally consistent and logical. To contend that Nature is not necessarly logical is not acceptable - in areas which we understand well we see that Nature is strictly logical, so it can be deduced that the same applies to the entire Universe. It is us, and particularly the current generation of physicists, who are illogical
Posted by: Peter Lloyd | February 28, 2006 07:34 PM
In support of the idea that the mind is a quantum mechanical computing device is the sleep-wake cycle. We are either asleep or awake. Any transition from one state to another is an event which occurs rather quickly. We cannot "hover" inh an in-betweeen state. We are either asleep or awake.
I understand that carbon tubes are a kind of quantum-mechanical resonance chamber. The introduction of an electron into one end of a tube is instantly detectable at the other end of the tube. These structures are found in nerve cells in abundance, I believe.
The "ah-ha" experience represents a rapid change of a mind to a new state of being, (like when I realized that the flaws of our economy and society can be solved by pricing natural resource wealth and charging those who take or degrade it, and giving the proceeds to all people equally).
Posted by: John Champagne | February 28, 2006 07:40 PM
flubber-gasted!
Where can a simpleton find a tutorial? I don't mind college math.
Posted by: Harry Shamir | February 28, 2006 08:06 PM
Great comments. I'll read that sci-fi story. It appears to me that the emperor is both naked and not naked. What ever happend to reductio ad absurdum restraints? Can thinking only go forward into gross absurdities, and not backward into looking for flaws? The concept of simultaneous contradictory unperceived states is itself contradictory with the concept of imagined observations. What does an unperceived state LOOK LIKE, hello?
bill34543@yahoo.com
Posted by: Bill W. | February 28, 2006 08:23 PM
I do not have a superpositional mind. I kind of follow but not quite follow this article. Still prefer Yes and No. They are so simple.
Posted by: CTJ Chan | March 2, 2006 12:40 PM
It is great that we can save Schrodinger's cat and bring it out safely everytime.
Posted by: Daniel Hazelton Waters | March 27, 2006 04:55 PM