To build a better quantum computer, look into a black hole, says professor Brian Cox It's hard for professor Brian Cox to hide his enthusiasm for black holes, and he didn't really try as he explained to The Register how progress in understanding the celestial phenomena contributes to the development of quantum computing. "The study of black holes in the last few years has really transformed our view of what …
It's remarkable that ... the black hole information paradox, and ... quantum error correction codes ... – that the crossover is intimate. It's almost a complete crossover,"
I remember that from last week - the claim that a black hole loses no information, which sounds satisfying - but is it proven experimentally or by observation?
The problem of quantum error correction is isolating the computation from spurious noise - in other words losing the information about the spurious noise but keeping the remaining unique solution - it doesn't seem like the same problem.
But then, I'm as thick as a brick, so ...
The trouble with that argument is that it's possible to construct blacks holes (non-rotating, uncharged, no accretion disk) where you can pass "through" the event horizon and never know - even the tidal forces are too weak for you to realise you've crossed the point of no return.
So they have to postulate other, empirically-unfounded reasons why this couldn't happen. We've no clue whether he's right. I wouldn't say it was a bad bet. But then I wouldn't have said Johnson getting elected as PM for a second time, weeks after he left, was a bad bet either. Maybe we don't live in that universe. We need a working theory of quantum gravity to know.
My brick understands that everything we know about black holes themselves is mathematical theories. That said, of the Conservation 'laws' the Conservation of Information (which is what creates the blackhole information paradox) is the one I have the hardest time with. I have erased too many things in my life.
Yes, yes, of course, you are the expert here, and Professor Brian Cox is an idiot. For saying something I'm pretty sure he didn't say anyway. Show me on the naked singularity where the bad man touched you.
Let's not even start with the contradiction in terms you have in your first sentence, eh? I'm not sure how something can pass by if it has been swallowed...
Er, no, Black Holes don't swallow everything. There's one at the centre of our galaxy, and no doubt, many others, and the galaxies survive just fine, orbiting them. We see binary systems with matter slowly accreting into black holes, the companion star doesn't just get swallowed.
Articles about black holes, or indeed anything quantum (at the other end of the physics scale) always attract the armchair theoretical physicists who somehow think that they are experts because they once saw a copy of A Brief History of Time in a charity shop, and of course they must know more about the subject than someone who has spent a career studying it properly.
Amanfrommars will be along shortly to talk more sense than all of them put together.
First you stare at A Brief History of Time.
and A Brief History of Time stares into you.
Then you start to read A Brief History of Time
and you begin to understand A Brief History of Time
Then you fail to understanding A Brief History of Time
but you continue reading A Brief History of Time
Then you stop reading A Brief History of Time
and A Brief History of Time reads you.
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I don't 100% agree with everything that anyone says about this but I like the way his comments and thoughts make me think about things ... virtually everything he's documented is smart and very educational, but of course we're finding new facts all the time so everyone's "statements" need to get updated as our theories change. If you want to evaluate the current quantum theory world then remember the classic (the icon defines Einstein, but I'm confident that they could be friends):
"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein
Indeed. The point of the Scientific Literacy movement isn't to turn everyone into scientists; it's to spread some knowledge of basic scientific ideas, and spur interest in the sciences. It's not perfect, but it's better than not making science popular and accessible to casual audiences.
The same can be said for any field, really. Give people a taste. Those with the inclination and aptitude may pursue it further; others will at least get a bit of mental exercise.
Is the question that I'm constantly asked by people I know who work in banking, or worse....with economics degrees.
Just proves that economists have zero imagination & don't realise that this kind of work will be affecting humanity in 100s of years time with their technology and discoveries.
I mean, can you imagine Newton going for funding asking for money based on the idea that his work would get lumps of metal that think for themselves onto mars and out of the Solar System
One civilisation per galaxy is pretty pessimistic. The Drake equation is a somewhat reasonable method for estimating the number of civilisations in the galaxy right now. You can certainly get the Drake equation to produce N=1, but the easiest way to do that is to assume that the average lifetime of a communicating civilisation is only a few centuries.
Two very depressing reasons for this spring to mind - either mostly civilisations destroy themselves pretty quickly, or the galaxy is very dangerous place, and everyone is hiding.
That nails it in my opinion. As mankind has developed ever more powerful technologies, the damage that one person can do either deliberately or accidentally is increasing exponentially over time. An unstable person in control of the nuclear launch buttons, Putin, Kim Jong-Un or a lowly laboratory worker working on viruses or other pathogens having a mishap (Wuhan maybe?) or other technology getting out of control, self replicating nano-tech.
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