In the coldness of space...
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In the coldest reaches of space, with what probability can I expect
there to be quantum Turing machines? A number of years ago, I ran across a lecture by John Conway where he discusses the ubiquity of computers, his thought experiment posits a large warehouse, full of transistors and other electronic components, and a madman with a soldering iron. He then goes on to say that for a sufficiently large warehouse, with probability one, we should expect to find the universal machine. I know that some on this list actually know about quantum computers, so please let me know if this idea is terribly flawed somehow. To the extent that such computers are out there, what would their architecture likely be? In the meantime, I will continue to fantasize about the scaffoldings that such computers may provide to the orderliness of what I can see. Perhaps, this is covered by the Hooft paper on vacuum fluctuations? I still need to read the paper. Tags: - Conway's madman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUAwhhC8cU&t=2363s&ab_channel=IstrailLaboratory - Formation of hydrocarbon chains in interstellar space: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-constraining-chemistry-carbon-chain-molecules-space.html -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Re: In the coldness of space...
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Classical or quantum computers need to be protected against radiation and designed to tolerate more of it. Space is an even harsher environment, not having the magnetosphere to protect against ionizing radiation. One of the main difficulties in quantum computing is achieving control but without giving up isolation. One wants qubits that are coupled to the things in the quantum computer but not everything else in the universe. A related tradeoff is how much time it takes to control a qubit. If it is well isolated, like in an ion trap, it tends to take a long time. If it is less well isolated, like a superconducting quantum interference device, it may be easier to configure.
-----Original Message----- From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale Sent: Wednesday, May 5, 2021 8:29 AM To: [hidden email] Subject: [FRIAM] In the coldness of space... In the coldest reaches of space, with what probability can I expect there to be quantum Turing machines? A number of years ago, I ran across a lecture by John Conway where he discusses the ubiquity of computers, his thought experiment posits a large warehouse, full of transistors and other electronic components, and a madman with a soldering iron. He then goes on to say that for a sufficiently large warehouse, with probability one, we should expect to find the universal machine. I know that some on this list actually know about quantum computers, so please let me know if this idea is terribly flawed somehow. To the extent that such computers are out there, what would their architecture likely be? In the meantime, I will continue to fantasize about the scaffoldings that such computers may provide to the orderliness of what I can see. Perhaps, this is covered by the Hooft paper on vacuum fluctuations? I still need to read the paper. Tags: - Conway's madman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUAwhhC8cU&t=2363s&ab_channel=IstrailLaboratory - Formation of hydrocarbon chains in interstellar space: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-constraining-chemistry-carbon-chain-molecules-space.html -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Re: In the coldness of space...
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I'm a little bit unsure about my knowledge about the subject, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Below is how I interpret some key issues around quantum computers. There are two different issues around quantum computers: 1 Practicalities around building a quantum computer with enough qbits to solve real world problems efficiently. There are many teams working on this and it's not very clear when (if?) this will be realized. 2 The type of problems that can or cannot be solved using quantum computers a) There are a small set of problems that can be solved efficiently using known quantum computer algorithms. For example, Shor's algorithm is a quantum computer algorithm for integer factorization.RSA encryption is commonly used in the financial industry (including Bitcoin) and if you can do integer factorization efficiently you can break RSA encryption. (Note that there are other types of encryption algorithms that cannot be solved using any current quantum computer algorithm and the financial world has plans to adapt their encryption technology appropriately.) An interesting issue around this is that there are undoubtedly many RSA encrypted messages out there that have been intercepted by bad actors and saved to be decoded using future quantum computers. It's going to be very interesting indeed. b) a Big question is whether a quantum computer algorithm will be found to solve problems like the travelling salesman problem efficiently. To keep this post simple I'm not going into computational complexity theory, I'll just give the conclusion: If a quantum computer algorithm is developed to solve a problem like the travelling salesman problem efficiently then it will also be able to solve many other real world problems (NP-complete problems) efficiently and that will have a huge positive impact on the world. (This is of course also provided point 1 above is met) On Thu, 6 May 2021 at 03:27, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote: Classical or quantum computers need to be protected against radiation and designed to tolerate more of it. Space is an even harsher environment, not having the magnetosphere to protect against ionizing radiation. One of the main difficulties in quantum computing is achieving control but without giving up isolation. One wants qubits that are coupled to the things in the quantum computer but not everything else in the universe. A related tradeoff is how much time it takes to control a qubit. If it is well isolated, like in an ion trap, it tends to take a long time. If it is less well isolated, like a superconducting quantum interference device, it may be easier to configure. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
Re: In the coldness of space...
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Recognizing the validity of complexity class arguments, the equivalences made between very different kinds of problems are amazing to me, assuming things like that scaling is easy and that error correction will be fast. The literature
on quantum algorithms largely assumes error corrected qubits. Meanwhile, there’s the possibility of larger, noisier, abstraction-free systems that are more suited to quantum chemistry type problems. Those could also have a big impact, but it would not be
in the same ways classical computers have had an impact. Marcus - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ |
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