Are We on the Cusp of Quantum Computing? I think most of us realize it is only a matter of time before quantum computers are perfected and are able to take over our scientific and engineering endeavors. Publicly the Chinese are said to be in the lead, because these computers use what are known as Qubits to compute and the Chinese are supposed to have created a quantum computer which uses 18 Qubits, which are more Qubits being used than by any other country. It is interesting to note for the current time we don’t need these computers for what most of us do. As a matter of fact, many of us don’t need some of the more powerful digital computers which are available because we use our cell phones for everything. There is another part to quantum computing and it is quantum computing is supposed to be hack proof. It is said if two parties or more share a secret key to the code of a quantum computer, the message it creates, or software it creates could never be figured out without that key. I have heard this before about other codes and it turned out to be untrue. Why does science desire quantum computers? The answer is simple, our digital computers use 0s and 1s. 0 represents off and 1 represents on. Quantum computers have three switches which are on, off and neither on or off. I know this sounds strange, but scientists will tell you they can create much more powerful software given this third option. This is the holy grail right now, until something better comes along. The site American Affairs describes a quantum computer in this way. “Imagine a computer solving the mathematical problems that today’s fastest supercomputers can’t begin to unlock in less than a blink of an eye. Imagine a technology that can enable an observer to see through walls, or see into the darkest depths of the world’s oceans. Imagine a technology that can build essentially unhackable global networks, while rendering an antagonist’s most secret data instantly transparent.” They described quantum computing much better than I ever could. All this is still a pipe dream however, because a quantum computer today cannot even compute as well as a conventional one and it would be a big complex machine which is nothing like what we consider a computer. Quantum computing is a scary proposition. The have nots will have no security because the haves will be able to get into everything they have. One thing digital networks have done is connect all of us and because of this every secret is out there and a country just has to figure out how to access it. Since the United States is one of the most, if not the most, technologically advanced country it has been the target of relentless hackers and much has been stolen from us. I am not just talking about citizens personal data, I am talking about military and diplomatic secrets. In pre-computer days a spy would take an obscure book and his contact would have the same one. He would send a message by listing numbers which referred to a page, a paragraph a sentence and a word. Could a quantum computer break this code without knowing what book was used? According to current thinking this might be a piece of cake for a quantum computer. Quantum computers might even have a darker side. It might be possible for them to help in the creation of weapons which would make nukes look like toys. If some extraterrestrial advanced race was watching us, and realized we have developed a quantum computer they might say enough is enough and just wipe us out, because we would become too much of a danger to all the other races if they exist. This would not only be because of the powerful planet destroying weapons we might develop, but also because we have a good chance of using a quantum computer to solve the problem of going fast enough to reach other solar systems. There must be some good side to a quantum computer so what would it be? The first thing I think of is our health. Who knows what health problems could be solved by such a super computer. We might wipe out all sickness if we are allowed to, or solve the aging problem. Maybe new techniques would enable us to build less expensive houses which are even more spacious than the ones we live in now. Another area might be food production where we can grow much more food in less space, or figure out how to keep insects away from crops without using insecticide. Most of us realize when you get something this powerful the military has to take advantage of its abilities. While militaries exist all over the earth, there will be weapons development and because of the way the world is run, and how the individual countries in it are run, there will be no stopping weapons development just as there was no stopping the spread of nuclear weapons after World War II. In a way the giant quantum computer at IBM reminds me of a room filling computer from the past, if that makes any sense. It has plenty of wires coming out of devices and going into others and plenty of stacks of devices. If things go the same way for quantum computers as they did for digital computers, than someday we might have a quantum computer being cell phone sized or smaller. Here is a little irony for you. The quantum computer at IBM is controlled by a conventional computer. A quantum computer makes errors which have to be corrected before you can read the result of a calculation. It is extremely hard to get all the Qubits to work together and they tend to decohere. IBM has been working on this problem for decades. Another problem is even though a quantum computer is powerful, it has proven to be slower on many tasks than a conventional computer. The IBM quantum computer does not yet have the precision which is needed to do algorithms which they already know how to do.
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