Quantum Q&A

The Biden administration is acting on quantum computers. Here’s what this means.

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Hello and happy Thursday! This week marks the 62nd anniversary of the first working laser, demonstrated by physicist Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Labs in Malibu, California. Cool fact: Maiman later benefited very practically from his invention when he underwent laser surgery in 2000. Speaking of lasers, did you know that they’re based on the quantum mechanical process of “stimulated emission?” Yeah, me either, until the Ol ‘Google machine served that factoid up after searching for “cool laser facts.” (This is how the sausage is made, folks).  

Anyway, the Biden administration is taking two new steps to advance American quantum computing and I thought I’d provide a “question and answer” primer on the science and why it has such significant national security implications. This stuff is basically magic but if you hang with me, I promise you’ll be fascinated.  

“Ok nerd-boy, get on with it. What’s ‘quantum mechanics’?” 

Quantum mechanics is the governing hypothesis of how nature works at the level of atoms and subatomic particles like photons. The word “quantum” refers to the notion that all energy, light, and matter is composed of discrete units, or quanta. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Kbroot

    Just found this newsletter. The January 6 commission, disinfo wars, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine have taken up reading time (and daily devotions) but thankful to have found this and finally read it! Excellent presentation of a big and complex subject.

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    Theirn Scott

    Thanks, Klon. While they have the potential to solve very narrow specific problems but can't replace traditional binary computers, does that fact mitigate the threat?

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    Dennis Wolf

    Kinda like reading a short Michael Crichton story without all the characters. ‘Cept this is real, Yikes! Beam me, somewhere!

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    The Stray Goose

    So. Will this new ‘quantum’ thingy be able to tell men what women really want?

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  5. Avatar photo
    The Stray Goose

    How soon until we get commercial fusion generation?

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  6. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “The U.S. military is trying to use “quantum sensing” to provide more precise navigation, even in areas where GPS is denied. ”

    Hmm. How would this work?

    Also, Klon, have you read 2034? Have I asked that before? What do you think?

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  7. Stan W

    “… in 2019 Google claimed to have conducted a calculation on a quantum computer in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most advanced conventional supercomputer at the time about 10,000 years to complete.”
    Question: How was it determined that the answer given by the quantum computer was correct? Seems to me that validation could be a major issue here.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Narwhal

      From Nature in 2019:

      “Verifying the solution was a further challenge. To do that, the team compared the results with those from simulations of smaller and simpler versions of the circuits, which were done by classical computers — including the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Extrapolating from these examples, the Google team estimates that simulating the full circuit would take 10,000 years even on a computer with one million processing units (equivalent to around 100,000 desktop computers). Sycamore took just 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

      Google thinks their evidence for quantum supremacy is airtight. Even if external researchers cut the time it takes to do the classical simulation, quantum hardware is improving — meaning that for this problem, conventional computers are unlikely to ever catch up, says Hartmut Neven, who runs Google’s quantum-computing team.”

      …

      “Researchers outside Google are already trying to improve on the classical algorithms used to tackle the problem, in hopes of bringing down the firm's 10,000-year estimate. IBM, a rival to Google in building the world’s best quantum computers, reported in a preprint on 21 October that the problem could be solved in just 2.5 days using a different classical technique2. That paper has not been peer reviewed. If IBM is correct, it would reduce Google’s feat to demonstrating a quantum ‘advantage’ — doing a calculation much faster than a classical computer, but not something that is beyond its reach.”

      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03213-z

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      1. Stan W

        Interesting, but hardly a definitive confirmation. Would be interesting to empirically test a projection / prediction made by a quantum computer calculation.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Narwhal

          Ok, take it up with Google.

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  8. Ben Bobbitt

    Fascinating topic and a great approachable article. I’ll spend more time than I should chasing down some of the references people have added in the comments.
    I have only a layman’s familiarity with quantum mechanics (we never studied it when I was getting my EE degree in college) but I’ve always found it to be a great reminder that we barely understand anything about how the universe works. Forget QM, we don’t even really understand how lighting rods and airplane wings work. That’s a bit depressing or a bit inspiring depending on your perspective I guess.
    Einstein was not a big fan of QM, because he believed that there is a single true “reality” that exists independently of our observation but QM basically tells us that there isn’t, until we observe it. Weird. I recommend Isaacson’s bio of Einstein for many reasons but not least of them is his approachable descriptions of Einstein’s work and thinking about relativity and QM. No math required!

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  9. Avatar photo
    Anne W (Raw5254)

    So interesting, and I didn’t think it would be. Darn, there’s always a downside.

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    Barry Alexander

    Hopefully, we're working very hard to "acquire" that Chinese knowledge. Turnabout is fair play.

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