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$100,000 Prize: Prove Quantum Computers Impossible
mikejuk writes "Quantum computing is currently a major area of research — but is this all a waste of effort? Now Scott Aaronson, a well-known MIT computer scientist, has offered a prize of $100,000 for any proof that quantum computers are impossible: 'I'm now offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to me, that scalable quantum computing is impossible in the physical world.' Notice the two important conditions — 'physical world' and 'scalable.' The proof doesn't have to rule out tiny 'toy' quantum computers, only those that could do any useful work."
Just point a gun at his head and ask him "Convinced?"
Err, uh,
Didn't D-Wave sell a commercial Quantum computer to Locheed Martin in 2010? Almost a year to the day?
Someone explain to me the difference between this quantum computer and the one they're trying to prove doesn't exist, please.
moox. for a new generation.
Now there's a challenge!
Prove that something which already exists CAN'T exist!
Methinks their money might be safe on this one... :P :P :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I will prove Quantum Computers both possible AND impossible at the SAME TIME!
So I guess the proof would be that they do exist, but only if you don't observe one.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
So if we make a quantum computer that can log in to facebook, it clearly is not doing useful work. Would we then win?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
D-Wave uses quantum annealing. This works for minimization problems, although it's unclear whether it's better than "simulated annealing". This does not work for problems like factoring integers, which "real" quantum computers can do.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Prove there is a god
I'm willing to bet all I own that neither will ever be successfully claimed. You need faith to accept either to be met.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
From what my friend who is into Quantum computers tells me that was almost certainly a scam.
And even without knowing the specifics of quantum computers enough to have any opinion I know that one of the leading quantum computing places in the world, Waterloo Canada does not have a QC that is even close to being usable. It is just like a few quantum bits with a few rooms full of machinery that operates these bits and is both slow and has way to small a number of bits to really be useful.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A similar question could've been asked years ago, back when transistors didn't exist: 'I'm now offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to me, that scalable personal computing is impossible in the physical world.'
Using only technology available then, the answer would've to scale down tubes to the minimal size and go "well this computer's too weak to do anything useful, ergo it's impossible to have a personal computer that isn't just a toy computer." Then transistors happened.
These kinds of things are stupid, because you're asking for a demonstration to an engineering problem, when engineering is always capped by scientific research. You could have a perfectly "convincing" proof today and tomorrow a new discovery crumbles it all to the ground.
Unless a theoretical and fundamental proof can be made that quantum computing is impossible, there's no reason to say that it is, and I have serious doubts such a proof can be made considering what has been accomplished thus far. Current limitations are engineering issues, but nothing fundamental is stopping a useful and practical quantum computer from existing.
It is just like a few quantum bits with a few rooms full of machinery that operates these bits and is both slow and has way to small a number of bits to really be useful.
I don't know Jack - sorry, I don't know Werner - about quantum computing, but you did just describe the state of regular computing circa 1946 or thereabouts.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Ever try proving something that is not going to happen?
Try it, and you'll know that it's impossible to prove something that is negative - like proving quantum computer impossible
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
a new BS meter for posting that link, which features the following gem among many others:
HPCwire: Can you prove that quantum computing is actually taking place?
Rose: This was the question we set out to prove with the research published in the recent edition of Nature. The answer was a conclusive "yes."
And this is the clincher:
HPCwire: What's next?
Rose: This is a very significant time in the history of D-Wave. We've sold the world's first commercial quantum computer to a large global security company, Lockheed Martin.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Isn't the human brain a quantum computer? Isn't that proof enough that it doesn't work?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
I don't know Jack - sorry, I don't know Werner - about quantum computing, but you did just describe the state of regular computing circa 1946 or thereabouts.
The difference is that the way forward was clear in 1946. Scaling up was primarily a problem of cooling and maintenance. In other words, engineering problems, not theoretical ones.
The area of quantum computing today is nowhere near on par with where we were with classical computing in 1946.
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When the status quo was a room full of vacuum tubes, I doubt that the way forward (solid state transistors) was as clear as you suggest. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. There is a vast world of difference between making smaller, faster, better vacuum tubes, and making a transistor. So I think GP's suggestion that we are in the vacuum tube era of quantum computing is reasonable, and we are waiting on the equivalent of a quantum transistor to make quantum computing feasible.
... if I can prove they both are possible and impossible?
The physics of oscillating crystals, such as those used in microphones and phonograph needles as well as radio transmitters, indicates that quantum computing could never not exist. Matched oscillating crystals have been in use for thousands of years and the mathematical model is proven by hundreds of different laboratory and home appliances; eg. an infrared spectrophotometric detector. The emission and absorption frequencies predicted by the mathematical model of the particle in a box (the basis for calculating electron dispersion around the nucleus and the fundamental beginning for subatomic calculations).
Particle in a box model translates into equations known as the Hamiltonian and, in combination with Eigenvalues calculated from the variables used in particle in a box modeling, generates the Schroedinger equation. Quantum computing could never be nonexistent because the mathematics of matched oscillating subatomic particles already has been proven millions of times over.
The marathon runner was not reporting a successful war campaign. The marathon runner was part of a system proving that those crystals do indeed oscillate, matched, from across the universe (at least 26.2 miles), in real time. Begin counting, begin running, when you arrive, repeat what they said back to them and report your current number. They will determine if your number matches theirs and if you repeat the exact words they said.
One aspect of the inside joke is that, when the marathon runner arrived and made his report, the response from the priests was,"That's _NOT_ what we said!" and they promptly hit him over the head with a baseball bat in frustration over the not completely failed experiment. "Don't tell anyone that he made it."
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
People were already working on solid-state transistors in 1946. The main difficulty was growing pure enough crystals.
Even without solid state transistors, computers would have continued to get more powerful and require less maintenance per tube as vacuum tubes improved (nothing like what was possible with solid-state transistors, of course). Remember, vacuum tubes themselves were only about 35 years old at that time--lots of improvement in size, power and reliabililty was possible, but work on them stopped when it became clear that transistors were so much better.
In the case of quantum computers, there are lots of ideas floating around, but no one actually has any clear idea of what will be needed to maintain quantum coherence across a large number of bits. In fact, it is not yet clear that it is possible.
The D-Wave computer uses quantum annealing which does not require coherence across a large number of bits, but which is also a LOT less useful than one that does.
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Wrong. See: Bell inequality.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Science isnt about being right or wrong, its about looking for the answer, whatever it may be. Schroedinger posed a fantastic, perspective-altering question, and you dismiss it as 'pseudo-science'
Good-bye
I am a layperson, though I studied quantum computers a bit at the university, and (years ago) I came to conclusion that quantum computers do not scale as well as normal computers. That's what will make them impractical.
In QC, unlike in normal computers, every qubit needs to be interlinked with all other qubits, otherwise the superposition won't work. In normal computers, once you can create a computer with X bits, creating a computer with X*2 bits is pretty easy, just build X twice (and add an address line). With quantum computers, creating a computer with even X+1 qubits from computer of X qubits can be hard, because you need to entangle the extra bit with all others. So the QC will scale only logarithmically to normal computer, and that will make it impractical (respectively, any advantage will be nullified by this problem).
At least that's what I think; I would like to hear a debunking argument.
Same AC here...
I forgot to add that in Genesis 19:32, that same righteous man tricks is daughters into thinking he's the last man on earth so he can knock up his own daughters.
This is the same Lot that is such a wonderful person god goes out of his way to spare him from the burning of soddom. Yet god kills his wife just for looking back at the city where her friends and relatives are dying and screaming.
Lot is really god's kind of fellow.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, and something of a fallacious presentation of it.
I don't think there was ever any doubt that a cat locked in a box for a sufficient length of time would expire. That is neither in doubt nor interesting.
The formulation deals with the status of a cat in a box present with some measuring apparatus capable of detecting decay of some isotope, linked to a sealed capsule of some poison, in a sealed container with a cat. Supposing the isotope has a roughly 50% chance of decaying in the next five minutes, and iff it decays the poison is released (killing the cat), after five minutes is the cat alive or dead?
The "collapse the waveform pseudo-science b***s***" here is simply translating the simultaneous probabilistic states into a single actual one. The reason this is relevant is in quantum mechanics there are real, measurable effects that occur as a result of the probabilistic waveform that differ from the effects of the collapsed state -- once you know whether the cat is alive or dead, in other words, you have a fundamentally different system than before it was observed.
Disclaimer: i have worked for a group competing with dwave.
What dWave has, and they claim not much more, is a system which is stable enough to use thermal noise (their unproven claim: with a small addition by quantum tunnelling) to find the ground state of a Hamiltonian to construct. This solves some tasks, but by far not all.
What the rest of the QC community wants is a computer which can generate and manipulate entangled state superpositions, enabling to execute arbitrary operations on exponentially scaling (in the number of qubits) sets.
My prediction: The thing (dwave) has is a nice patent stack. Once other groups solve the important problems dwave will sue the fuck out of them or agree on a technology exchange.
The fact that simply viewing the state alters the state is the most interesting part to me, because that means what we know about the natural world is gonna have to be shitcanned once we find out how everything is connected at the quantum level. This kind of effects bugged Einstein so much he came up with his famous "God does not play dice" quote because all that he took as fact when reduced to the quantum state basically got a "LOL Goatse" because those rules simply didn't apply. The fact that the observer, supposedly completely disconnected from the actual event, can affect the event simply by observing the event? Now THAT is interesting.
As for TFA the problem is he is trying to predict something when our current understanding of it is frankly still quite primitive. it would be like saying "Can we build a device that will reach the moon and send data back" in 1919, yes we could, just not with the state of technology that existed then. Who knows how many discoveries that will change the world and our understanding of how things work will be found in the next 20 years. Can we build one NOW? Nope, we are still too primitive when it comes to understanding how things work at that level. But when I was a kid the thought that a PC would reach 1GHz and still be affordable to the masses would have been laugh worthy, hell a Mb of RAM would cost you more than your house. But things change and now computers a thousand times more powerful than the Crays we used to drool over can be bought at the local best buy with a paper route. Trying to predict what the next breakthrough is gonna be AND whether or not that will allow a quantum computer a million times faster than anything we currently have while fitting in a watch? Frankly we just don't know and won't know until we get there.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I dismiss it because we now have some evidence that it took us down the wrong road.
BTW, science IS about being right or wrong - when you build a castle on a flawed hypothesis and aren't ready to question it and toss it on the trash-bin when it's wanting, that's not science, that's religion.
The smallest amount of time that can be measured is a Planck unit. And with regards to energy and mass, there may not be any limitation as to how small each unit can be. In fact, the resolution may be as infinite as calculating out Pi. So most assuredly, any "unit" that makes up the universe is purely a concept invented by man. Sorry, but I'm afraid it's turtles all the way down.
Life is not for the lazy.
You're assuming for a moment that there is even a natural "unit" of time yet to be discovered as though the universe's space and time are made up of some natural resolution that can be calculated. I'm simply stating that it's perhaps infinite in the true sense of the word.
The universe is what you make of it. Is that what your telling me? Let me flip the question back at you. By what extraordinary claim and on what evidence is the universe "grainy" (granular of a finite calculation)?
You know. Some say the Big Bang happened. Some say it not only happened, but in fact is continuing. Time just dilates the passage of time the closer to the present you observe from.
Life is not for the lazy.