kevin klatmanIf you've ever seen a fancy chandelier you've seen what looks most similar to a quantum computer, a long, twisting and cylindrical shining thing of gold metal and wires that hangs vertically in its oblong direction, but unlike chandeliers, quantum computers seek to solve some of humanity's problems that have evaded even our most powerful computing systems to date.
The oft used analogy for quantum computing is the "boat versus car analogy." A quantum computer is not like a faster car with better handling.
Rather, it's a boat, not better than a car, but it can access intellectual problems that have previously eluded us because of the the terrain it can traverse, not the superiority of its makeup.
Chief among these problems, or at least what strikes me as the umbrella that covers the list of problems, is the ability for a quantum computer to solve the problem of randomness.
Unlike classical bits, which can only be in one of two states (0 or 1), qubits can exist in a superposition of states. This means that a qubit can be in a combination of both 0 and 1 simultaneously, with varying probabilities. When a qubit in superposition is measured, it collapses into either the 0 or 1 state, and the outcome is inherently random.
That is to say, no one told the qubit to become a 1 or a 0, because this randomness is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics which cannot be predicted or determined prior.
This article:
demonstrates code for a program written in q# for those interested in the process of harnessing the randomness of quantum computing and turning it into a useable random number generator.
So why is randomness not just a problem, but the problem. Well to fundamentally understand our reality we have to be able to simulate the principles which govern our reality.
Quantum computing promises to solve some of the most pressing issues known to man and science alike by meeting reality on its base level. The level of the very small, the level of random.
