With quantum ‘bits’, or qubits, able to have a value of zero and one at the same time, they appear to violate physical matter’s inability to be in two places or two states at the same time. But they’re real, with scientists able to read the individual quantum values of 10,000 phosphorous atoms in a new experiment.

The breakthrough was made by US physicist, Christoph Boehme and his colleagues. As these atoms ‘spin’ and can have a value of zero and one simultaneously and can have data read from them, taking us one step closer to quantum computing in everyday use by billions worldwide.

With older technology, scientists were only able to read the aggregate value of 10 million atoms, confirming again that quantum computing was real. With this newer accuracy, the technology takes a step forward, but is still years away from being used as readily and easily as today’s computers.

It’s almost as if we’re back to the early days of today’s computer technology, playing with computers the size of two football fields in the 1950s.

Despite all of the incredible advances in computer processors, with 32 bits, 64 bits, dual cores, multi cores and more, quantum computing threatens to one day make all of today’s technology look radically weak and underpowered.

Quantum computing could go 16 billion billion times faster than today’s 64 bit processors, giving computers such brute force power that today’s almost impossible to crack passwords could be cracked in seconds or minutes, and computer interaction with humans would theoretically be on a scale where they spoke back to us and interacted as seemingly normal people, albeit still as computers that did what we asked them to do unless they spontaneously develop a consciousness as has been predicted by many science fiction writers.

A quantum computer could easily be the brain of future humanoid robots, even androids as portrayed in Blade Runner and elsewhere, but we’ve obviously got a long way to go before that happens.

We’d have to check with Gordon Moore to see what he says about quantum computing and his famous law, but one thing’s for sure… the future’s coming faster than we think, and it’s not going to look like Kansas anymore!

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Entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 8:39 am under Technology.

Read more entries by Alex Zaharov-Reutt.
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