Quantum Cumputers

Quantum Cumputers

By the strange laws of quantum mechanics, Folger, a senior editor at Discover, notes, an electron, proton, or other subatomic particle is "in more than one place at a time," because individual particles behave like waves, these different places are different states that an atom can exist in simultaneously. Ten years ago, Folger writes, David Deutsch, a physicist at Oxford University, argued that it may be possible to build an extremely powerful computer based on this peculiar reality. In 1994, Peter Shor, a mathematician at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, proved that, in theory at least, a full-blown quantum computer could factor even the largest numbers in seconds--an accomplishment impossible for even the fastest conventional computer.

An outbreak of theories and discussions of the possibility of building a quantum computer now permeates itself throughout the quantum fields of technology and research. It's roots can be traced back to 1981, when Richard Feynman noted that physicists always seem to run into computational problems when they try to simulate a system in which quantum mechanics would take place. The calculations involving the behavior of atoms, electrons, or photons, require an immense amount of time on today's computers. In 1985 in Oxford England the first description of how a quantum computer might work surfaced with David Deutsch's theories. The new device would not only be able to surpass today's computers in speed, but also could perform some logical operations that conventional ones couldn't.

This research began looking into actually constructing a device and with the go ahead and additional funding of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey a new member of the team was added. Peter Shor made the discovery that quantum computation can greatly speed factoring of whole numbers. It's more than just a step in micro-computing technology; it could offer insights into real world applications such as cryptography. "There is a hope at the end of the tunnel that quantum computers may one day become a reality," says Gilles Brassard of University of Montreal.

Quantum Mechanics give an unexpected clarity in the description of the behavior of atoms, electrons, and photons on the microscopic levels. Although this information isn't applicable in everyday household u...

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...ct, base this on a unit consisting of five quantum dots, one in the center and four and at the ends of a square, electrons would be tunneled between any of the two sites. Stringing these together would create the logic circuits that the new quantum computer would require. The distance would be sufficient to create "binary wires" made of rows of these units, flipping the state at one end causing a chain reaction to flip all the units’ states down along the wire, much like today's dominoes transmit inertia.

Speculation on the impact of such technology has been debated and dreamed about for years. In the arguing points, the point that it's potential harm could be that the computational speed would be able to thwart any attempts at security, especially the now NSA's data encryption standard would be useless as the algorithm would be a trivial problem to such a machine. On the latter part, this dreamed reality first appeared in the TV show Quantum Leap, where this technology becomes readily apparent when Ziggy --the parallel hybrid computer that he has designed and programmed-- is mentioned, the capabilities of a quantum computer mirror that of the show's hybrid computer.