Boffins manage to keep graphene qubits 'quantum coherent' for all of 55... nanoseconds Physicists have formed qubits – quantum bits – from graphene for the first time, according to research published in Nature Nanotechnology. The applications of quantum computing are still a little handwavy at the moment, but it all boils down to the creation of qubits. Traditional binary computers carry out operations using …
"I wonder if quantum computing is the next fusion?"
Well it could be worse. We know that fusion works, the sun does it. However we do not know yet know if quantum computers or any significant size are possible. It could still be that there are fundamental limits which make this impossible. However however that goes, we'll still know a great deal more after having tried to build quantum computers.
a practical working example is always 30 years away?
Well, some people (who actually know something about the subject) think so, such as Mikhail Dyakonov.
Personally, I suspect practical general QC is at least a long way off. We get many of these "best result so far" publications in QC research, but as Dyakonov points out, we're well off the predictions of a few years ago, and the researchers are blithely ignoring some of the theoretical issues.
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Having posted anonymously for decades, I recently revealed my true identity because The Reg is my favourite pseudoscientific, techish site and the forums are inhabited by some bloody strange people. I've watched it grow from an extremely ugly chick into an even uglier winged beast, feeding on rotting happenings worldwide and pooping it out all fresh and steamy for our delectation.
This post has been deleted by its author
Echoing the sentiments above me, been reading El Reg for the best part of two decades now.
"and the forums are inhabited by some bloody strange yet wonderful people."
FTFY
PS Not seen a 404 error on here in years & just found this lovely little jpg (From the Oregon Story).
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/404_img.jpg
All you did when you cooled it down, was reduce the noise, what you have there is matter resonance.
1. You already know there is a resonant electric field, you've seen the effects in the oscillations and jiggle of electrons and protons.
2. You already know there is an electric force, it's well understood. Those jiggles must either *cause* or be the-result-of such a field.
3. And you can quickly accept resonance with a simple thought experiment: If matter X oscillates at frequency F1, and matter Y oscillates at frequency F2, and two ARE CONNECTED BY ELECTRIC FORCE, then how can they NOT even out those frequencies? How would you prevent that energy from being transfered via that force to *stop* it settling to a resonant value??
So you already know you have a resonant oscillating electric field in matter. So of course you can make graphene atoms resonate to be the same properties when you cool them. It's about 3.4x10^23 Hz, and its the same field that light moves over, and the same field that matter spins over.
Your qubits will be in the same state across the graphene, and they'll be in that same state every N wavelengths of the resonance frequency of matter, i.e. some integer fraction of 3.4x10^23 Hz. You're not making a quantum computer there, those are just analogue computers. You're proving the resonance of matter.
Re: It's only resonance "Well someone had to bring this thread down into the gutter"
The conciseness of your response to such sophomoric drivel is probably very wise. Once again I'm reminded of a saying that's become popular in this world of anonymous idiots:
"Don't wrestle with a pig. You get filthy, but the pig enoys it."
If you think about it for a second, isn't it amazing that at 10 millikelvin, almost absolute zero, all of the matter was completely intact. Structure, mass, and even oscillations required to maintain that structure, all still working and still there.
Things like electron-spin, all still functioning.
Amazing, and odd, no?
The applications of quantum computing are still a little handwavy at the moment
I don't believe they are. The likelihood of practical general QC may be very much in doubt,1 but if we ever have it, we know what to do with it. There are two very well-known, general-purpose algorithms in BQP (Shor's and Grover's), and they have a bunch of practical applications. The other big area is in physics simulations.
The more interesting question (besides the feasibility one, on which I am skeptical) is economics. If GQC does turn out to be "practical" but only at tremendous resource cost, then will any problems be worth using it? We already have trial deployments of post-quantum cryptography for mass crypto (i.e. TLS),2 so by the time anyone has a usable GQC machine it'll only be useful for cracking historical cryptography; and if it's expensive, only very select items from the archives.3 For other applications, you'd have to find specific instances of problems where those specific solutions have great value.
Physics simulations look like the most plausible applications for Really Expensive General Quantum Computing.
1And, no, the DWave machine does not count. That may not be quantum anything, and even if it is, it's just adiabatic QC (quantum annealing). It's a fancy analog computer, with of course a big classical digital computer wrapped around it. It doesn't solve problems in BQP.
2Google's rolling out their second experimental post-quantum TLS suite, using a combination of X25519 and HRSS for Kx.
3The lack of PFS with RSA Kx means more bang for your buck when cracking the key exchange in most of the archived SSL/TLS traffic the NSA and other SIGINT types are no doubt holding, but you'd still have to identify targets of great interest if cracking is expensive. And a lot of that we can crack with conventional machines now, if we really want to.
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