AceNik's Portal

An undergraduate computer science student has created a “quantum chess” game that stumps computers’ ability to search all possible outcomes of possible moves by having chess pieces mimic particles that are subject to quantum mechanics.

The chess pieces follow the principle of superposition: they can exist in multiple states until you try to move them (or in the case of quantum physics, until you try to measure a particle’s position or momentum).

The uncertainty principle is at the foundation of quantum mechanics: You can measure a particle’s position or its velocity, but not both. Now it seems that quantum computer memory could let us violate this rule.

The theoretical underpinnings of the uncertainty principle are, like most things to do with quantum mechanics, extremely difficult to follow and require a minimum of six degrees to really understand, but the great physicist Paul Dirac provided a more concrete illustration of what the uncertainty principle means.

I don’t know when optical quantum computers are going to arrive, but I sure hope they look like this crazy Toshiba visualization of an Entangled Light Emitting Diode. This new LED type could finally make practical quantum computers possible.

Take a few of my favorite subjects: quantum dots, satellites, and gold. Mix them together, and what do you get? A breakthrough from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that could revolutionize infrared detection. Somewhere, the Predator is jealous.

What the RPI researchers have managed to do increase detectivity in quantum dot-based IR detectors 20 times over—is particularly remarkable in that they’re able to greatly enhance the signal of the detector without also increasing the noise.

It only measures seven atoms but, according to project lead scientist Michelle Simmons, computers made with this transistor—the smallest ever made—will “solve problems that would take longer than the life of the universe with a classical computer.”

Simmons says that the silicone crystal-embedded transistor is the first that put us in a solid path towards true quantum computers, which she predicts will be available for deployment in commercial applications in just five years.