I am not going to claim that I know everything there is to know about Quantum Physics or Quantum Computing but then, who can? It would be like making the statement that there is a single person on earth that understands the current IRS tax code here in the United States. There are lots of assumptions and a lot of things stated as proven fact, but in the end, there is very little truly understood.

Take for a moment superposition: This is a word used to try to explain the fact that a particle exists in more than one position at the same moment in time, and that only the measurement of that particle causes it to choose one position over another. For example: In an earlier post I tried to explain the 2 slit experiment in which physicists say that a single electron fired towards 2 slits, travels through both slits at the same time. And that only our measurement (or attempted measurement) causes it to choose a single hole or the other. See my earlier post as to why I think this might be wrong, but for now I want to assume they are correct.

In today’s world of computers, we typically use 8 bits of memory to hold a single character. These memory bits hold either a 0 or a 1 and we have a possible 255 characters we can make up. This combination of 0’s and 1’s allows us to represent massive amounts of information and processes. Computer programs use this information in order to determine what a user just typed at the computer keyboard, or what is currently displayed on the screen. Now watch this!

Quantum Computing is the attempt to use electron states to represent this 0 or 1 by measuring the particles spin, and using that value to represent information. But as we just stated above, in the world of Quantum Physics, a particle exists in all places at once, or at least until we measure them. Physicists use this behavior to state that it’s now possible to represent an entire character set with only 8 bits. In the old system, you would have 2 states multiplied times 8 positions which yields 255 different combinations. In the Quantum Computing methodology, they claim you’d only need the 8 positions, since all 8 particles are representing all possible combinations at once.

They go on to tell us that it will be possible to have computers that can overrun time itself, due to the fact that according to Quantum Physics, and supposed tests, particles can actually communicate information with no respect to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the speed of light.

So, let’s consider for a moment a computer made from particles that are interpreted via the rules of Quantum Physics. What would it tell you? I want to store the word “mouse” in it’s memory. How would one accomplish this? According to Quantum Physicists, the computer would require a lot less memory to store the entire word and would be capable of communicating this information faster than the speed of light, heck, instantly. But thinking through the logical use of this computer gets a little crazy. I mean, lets consider a computer that could store information as quantum bits instead of our current magnetic type bits.

The first hurdle we have to face, is how do you move them from one location to another if they just instantly pop in and out of existence? Once you figure that out, we’d next have to determine how to preset a state for the particle before we transmit it. Then we need to somehow, magically transmit this bit of information from point A to point B. Let’s just say we figured this out. We get our little computer pumping little quantum bits out like the mad physics machine it is. We now want to try to have it remember something.

Hmm, remember what we said in the beginning? According to Quantum Physics, our little bits don’t really have a state at all until we actually measure them. In fact, we really don’t even know where the little things are until we measure them. Oh, and to make it even more interesting, we can’t really know where it is at all because we can only measure one thing at a time. We can find it, or we can measure it’s spin. Since it’s the spin we’re after, let’s just stay focused on it.

So we figured out all of our problems and now want to store the word mouse. So we set out to measuring our little quantum bits to determine what they are set to, but we actually want to adjust them to be set to a letter “m” for the first letter we want to send across the wire. So let’s say we get this done and give it a little push onto our wire. Well, we don’t really know where it is and since it pops up wherever and whenever we measure it and exists everywhere in every possible state until then, it would seem a difficult task to push it, but lets say we do.

Now we’re at the other end of the wire and we’re ready to see what it says. Remember that the other end of the line has no idea we sent an “m” to them. So they attempt to measure it, but hold up, taking seriously what was said about this little devil, we also need to assume that no one else tried to measure it along it’s way. If so, they would have effected the bit and perhaps changed its state. Perhaps even a small blemish in the line in which it was sent caused it to pop into existence along the way and change its state.

Ok, we’ll assume we have a perfect straight path and all is good, so now how to measure? Just like bit which is on or off, an electron has a spin up or a spin down, so we will just measure it to see which it is. But unlike a normal bit, we have to make some pretty major assumptions that everything is still working the same as when it left. We also have to initiate the read since the electron really doesn’t exist anywhere until we try to read it. It would seem we still only get a possible of 2 states from a single bit so the comments of a single quantum bit being able to somehow store more information than a current memory bit does, well, seems a bit strange. Yet they always do end Quantum conversations with the fact that no one really understands a thing about it.

The point to this article is that while experimentation is great and we learn a lot from it, I personally feel that we’ve give Quantum Physics a life of it’s own that might just be too far fetched to be real.

I’m sure that there are many aspects of these Quantum Computers that I just don’t understand and may never be able to understand. However, I feel that at the moment, we waste a tremendous amount of time and money, in search of magic. Either Quantum Physics is wrong, which is what I lean towards, or Quantum Computing just makes no sense.

Who’s to know? At this point, no computer has been built using this technology and the tests that have been done to show it works have been flimsy at best. Yet years have already been invested and most likely billions of dollars moved towards making the illogical logical… After all, a computer is 100% logic and nothing more…

– glenn hancock