Speaker 1: Welcome to the Sentient Code, where intelligence is engineered, autonomy
Speaker 1: is emerging, and a line between human and machine grows thinner.
Speaker 1: Each episode, we decode the algorithms, explore the robotics, and
Speaker 1: examine the ideas shaping the future of artificial minds.
Speaker 2: Imagine a machine, right, they can basically break every single
Speaker 2: encrypted banking password on Earth before you've even finished your
Speaker 2: morning coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ultimate quantum god machine. I mean, that's the
Speaker 3: sci fi promise we've all been sold for what decades.
Speaker 2: Now, exactly, And the narrative has always been so simple.
Speaker 2: It was just, you know, as soon as we refine
Speaker 2: the engineering quantum computers against scale exponentially.
Speaker 3: Right, unlocking this level of processing power that essentially borders
Speaker 3: on magic.
Speaker 2: But and this is a massive but there's a highly
Speaker 2: controversial new paper from Oxford physicist Tim Palmer. It was
Speaker 2: just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Speaker 2: and it basically throws a fundamentally universe altering wrench into
Speaker 2: those gears.
Speaker 3: It really does. I mean, we're looking at the very
Speaker 3: real possibility that this ultimate supercomputer actually has a hard
Speaker 3: physical ceiling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a limit that isn't imposed by our clumsy engineering,
Speaker 2: but by the literal physical fabric of the universe itself, which.
Speaker 3: Is wild because that completely upends standard quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: It does. And you know, if you're listening to this
Speaker 2: and you actively track processing chips for your tech portfolio,
Speaker 2: or honestly, if you're just someone hoping your banking app
Speaker 2: and your private text messages stay secure for the next
Speaker 2: ten years, this matters to you.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. Understanding this fundamental limit completely rewrites the timeline
Speaker 3: of our technological future.
Speaker 2: Because the tech industry has basically been operating on this
Speaker 2: assumption that quantum computing is just an open highway right.
Speaker 3: Right, an endless road. But Palmer's analysis suggests there is
Speaker 3: a very concrete barricade approaching and rap it fundamentally changes
Speaker 3: what these machines will ever actually be able to do.
Speaker 2: So before we get to the barricade, we really need
Speaker 2: to understand the highway, Like why did physicists think this
Speaker 2: was unbounded in the first place. We all know the
Speaker 2: basic promise of quibbits, right, superposition allows them to scale
Speaker 2: exponentially rather than linearly like classical bits.
Speaker 3: Right, But the problem you're looking at today isn't the
Speaker 3: superposition itself. It's actually the mathematical space where we assume
Speaker 3: those superpositions live.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack that because the standard pitch is always
Speaker 2: that every single added quibot doubles the number of quantum
Speaker 2: states the entire system can occupy.
Speaker 3: And I mean, the math behind that doubling is just staggering.
Speaker 3: Think about a classical computer. It grows linearly. You add
Speaker 3: a transistor, you get exactly one transistor's worth of extra
Speaker 3: compute makes sense. But because a quibot can exist in
Speaker 3: a superposition of states, meaning it encodes multiple possibilities simultaneously,
Speaker 3: adding just one more quibot doubles the complexity of the
Speaker 3: system can handle.
Speaker 2: Right. So it's the difference between reading a book page
Speaker 2: by page and reading every single book in a massive
Speaker 2: library at the exact same time exactly.
Speaker 3: And by the time you string together just say, three
Speaker 3: hundred perfectly functioning quibits, the number of simultaneous states that
Speaker 3: system can represent is greater than the number of atoms
Speaker 3: in the observable universe.
Speaker 2: Wait, hang on, if the math says that at three
Speaker 2: hundred quibots, we are tracking more states than there are
Speaker 2: literal atoms in the observable universe. Aren't we just kind
Speaker 2: of admitting that our foundational math has lost touch with reality? Like,
Speaker 2: where is the physical universe actually storing all that information?
Speaker 2: It feels like we just look at a graph curving
Speaker 2: upwards and assume the line goes into infinity, Like we
Speaker 2: handed the laws of physics a blank check.
Speaker 3: That is the exact logical gap that Palmer's exposing. Here
Speaker 3: you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. To understand how the entire scientific community just accepted
Speaker 3: that blank check, you have to look at the map
Speaker 3: we use to chart quantum behavior. It's this abstract geometric
Speaker 3: framework known as Hilbert space.
Speaker 2: Right, Hilbert space.
Speaker 3: In standard quantum mechanics, you don't just describe a particle's
Speaker 3: position in normal three D space, you know, you describe
Speaker 3: the entire state of a complex quantum system as a
Speaker 3: single precise point moving through this massive, multi dimensional Hilbert space.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting to me. Whenever have
Speaker 2: to try to visualize Hilbert space, I like to think
Speaker 2: of it as this bizarre, endlessly expanding mansion.
Speaker 3: Oh I like that, a very weird mansion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you plug in a few quibits, so you
Speaker 2: get a few rooms, but every time you add a
Speaker 2: single new quivot, the mansion doesn't just get like a
Speaker 2: sunroom built on the back. It literally spawns a million
Speaker 2: new dimensions, hidden hallways, parallel floors.
Speaker 3: The geometry just explodes outwards exactly. And to build on
Speaker 3: your mansion analogy, the crucial part isn't just that those
Speaker 3: rooms exist, it's how the quantum state actually moves through them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Standard quantum theory relies really heavily on complex numbers and
Speaker 3: continuous mathematics. That implies there are no gaps in the
Speaker 3: floorboards of your mansion, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's smooth.
Speaker 3: Perfectly smooth. The state vector, which is the point representing
Speaker 3: your quantum system, can just glide through those endless wallways
Speaker 3: with infinite smoothness. Every microscopic fraction of a coordinate in
Speaker 3: that geometric space is theoretically available to be occupied.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like an analog volume dial on
Speaker 2: an old stereo. You aren't just clicking mechanically from volume
Speaker 2: level five to level six.
Speaker 3: Right, you can turn that dial to five point one
Speaker 3: or five.
Speaker 2: Point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one. Right,
Speaker 2: You can make these infinitely smaller microadjustments just seamlessly sweeping
Speaker 2: through an endless range of values.
Speaker 3: Yes, and the math tells us the quantum system can
Speaker 3: utilize all that continuous, infinitely divisible space to perform computations
Speaker 3: that would take a normal computer millions of years.
Speaker 2: But the map is not the territory, right exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, humans invented continuous mathematics like calculus and complex
Speaker 3: numbers because they are incredibly elegant and frankly easy to
Speaker 3: work with on a chalkboard. Sure, but the territory of
Speaker 3: the physical universe rarely matches the perfectly smooth map of
Speaker 3: our math. Palmer's reality check is that the physical universe
Speaker 3: simply cannot foot the bill to sustain that smooth, continuous
Speaker 3: volume dial.
Speaker 2: Especially as those Hilbert space dimensions grow into the trillions
Speaker 2: and beyond. Right, And this is where we really have
Speaker 2: to ask the foundational question, why not what actual physical
Speaker 2: law is stepping in to restrict the system, Because if
Speaker 2: Palmer is right, he's just critiquing tech companies building quantum computers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 2: He is pointing out a massive blind spot in how
Speaker 2: we understand physics itself. Are we just confusing a mathematical
Speaker 2: theory with physical reality.
Speaker 3: He absolutely is pointing that out, and his argument leans
Speaker 3: heavily into the fundamental limits of physical information. In our universe,
Speaker 3: every specific coordinate, every single decimal point of precision requires
Speaker 3: actual physical information to define it.
Speaker 2: Right, Information isn't free exactly.
Speaker 3: Think about things like the Baekenstein bound or the concept
Speaker 3: of the plank length. Physics tells us there is a
Speaker 3: maximum density of information that any region of space can
Speaker 3: hold before it well collapses into a black hole.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, the universe has a finite granularity. So when your
Speaker 3: quantum system tries to occupy a state that requires tracking
Speaker 3: three hundred decimal places of precision across two to the
Speaker 3: power of three hundred dimensions, the.
Speaker 2: Universe basically just drops the decimals. Yes, it just physically
Speaker 2: cannot hold that much precision. So my analog volume dial
Speaker 2: analogy is actually completely wrong for the real universe.
Speaker 3: Pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the universe doesn't have a smooth dial. It has
Speaker 2: a digital button. It only has discrete clicks. It can
Speaker 2: go to level five or level six, but there is
Speaker 2: physically no such thing as five point zero zero zero
Speaker 2: zero zero zero zero one.
Speaker 3: What's fascinating here is that the physical reality underlying all
Speaker 3: this is discrete. It's countable, separate, and totally limited. Okay,
Speaker 3: Palmer suggests that the physically accessible states within the massive
Speaker 3: Hilbert space don't actually fill up the whole continuous volume. Instead,
Speaker 3: they likely form something closer to a fractal attractor.
Speaker 2: A fractal attractor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, think of it as a very specific, highly constrained,
Speaker 3: geometric subset of states. So the math of standard quantum
Speaker 3: mechanics still shows this beautifully smooth mansion expanding on paper,
Speaker 3: but in gritty physical reality, the vast majority of those
Speaker 3: rooms are just completely locked off.
Speaker 2: Because the physical universe does not have the information carrying
Speaker 2: capacity to assign fully independent, continuous values to every single
Speaker 2: dimension as it scales up. We are literally confusing a
Speaker 2: mathematical chalkboard model with the actual constraints of the cosmos.
Speaker 2: It's exactly like having a highly detailed map of a
Speaker 2: sprawling megacity, but when you actually drive there you find
Speaker 2: out that ninety nine percent of the streets don't physically
Speaker 2: exist because the universe ran out of asphalt.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. The map shows
Speaker 3: the glid, but the territory is mostly empty space.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And when you constrain a system to a discrete set
Speaker 3: of states rather than a continuous mathematical infinity, you fundamentally
Speaker 3: cap its computational power.
Speaker 2: Right, because you lose access to all that continuous space
Speaker 2: between the grid lines.
Speaker 3: Exactly, the exponential doubling of computing power we rely on
Speaker 3: for the so called quantum god machine simply cannot continue forever.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if the accessible universe of quantum states is restricted,
Speaker 2: and our volume dial really only has a fin out
Speaker 2: number of discrete clicks, the natural next question is exactly
Speaker 2: when do we run out of room?
Speaker 3: Right? Where is the barricade on the highway?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What is the ceiling?
Speaker 3: Well, Palmer's mathematical estimates provide a very concrete and honestly
Speaker 3: incredibly sobering threshold by calculating the point at which the
Speaker 3: sheer number of required discrete states exceeds the local physical
Speaker 3: system's ability to maintain coherence without violating these fundamental cosmic
Speaker 3: information bounds. He pinpoints a hard physical ceiling.
Speaker 2: And what's the number?
Speaker 3: It's right, around one thousand cubits.
Speaker 2: Wait, one thousand cubits. That's it.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: If you are listening to this and assuming that some
Speaker 2: far off sci fi century away, it isn't advanced quantum
Speaker 2: devices currently being built are already knocking on the door
Speaker 2: of that one thousand cubit limit. Tech giants like IBM
Speaker 2: and Google have already unveiled processors with hundreds of cubits.
Speaker 3: Right, we are actively accelerating toward a brick wall in
Speaker 3: this current decade. That is wild, And to take that
Speaker 3: even further. The timing is critical because the industry is
Speaker 3: currently trying to transition from noisy, error prone physical kubits
Speaker 3: to perfect, stable, logical quid.
Speaker 2: Right to fix the air rates exactly.
Speaker 3: But to create just one logical quibut, standard theory dictates
Speaker 3: you need hundreds, sometimes thousands of physical quibuts working together
Speaker 3: in a continuous state space to correct each other's air Ah.
Speaker 2: I see where this is going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, If the universe cuts off the continuous state space
Speaker 3: at around one thousand physical quibots, then creating a machine
Speaker 3: with millions of logical quibets, which by the way, is
Speaker 3: the data goal of almost every major quantum hardware.
Speaker 2: Company, becomes physically impossible.
Speaker 3: Physically impossible.
Speaker 2: Okay, but what actually happens when we hit that one
Speaker 2: thousand first quibot. Does the machine explode, does the lab
Speaker 2: catch on fire, or does the mass just quietly fail?
Speaker 3: This raises an important question about how we test it.
Speaker 3: But no, the machine doesn't explode. The magic just stops.
Speaker 2: It just stops.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you try to force the system into a
Speaker 3: state space that is more complex than the discrete physical
Speaker 3: universe can support, the system will inherently Decohere the noise
Speaker 3: overpowers the signal.
Speaker 2: So adding the one thousand first quibbot no longer doubles
Speaker 2: the computing power.
Speaker 3: Exactly. That breathtaking exponential curve we've been promised just flattens
Speaker 3: out into a standard linear curve or simply degrades entirely
Speaker 3: into quantum static.
Speaker 2: And we're about to find out empirically if Palmer is right,
Speaker 2: because we are building the hardware to cross this threshold
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: We are, and to be fair, even constrained to around
Speaker 3: a thousand cubits, these systems are still going to be
Speaker 3: incredibly fast. They will like vastly exceed the computing power
Speaker 3: of the classical supercomputers we use today for certain specific tasks.
Speaker 4: Right It's not like they're useless, not at all, but
Speaker 4: the limitless exponential scaling, the sci fi fantasy that we
Speaker 4: can just keep adding cubits to solve literally any problem imaginable.
Speaker 3: That era is likely over before it even really began.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for the real world?
Speaker 2: What happens when the world's most anticipated technology hits a
Speaker 2: physical ceiling.
Speaker 3: It creates a really fascinating dual edged sword for society.
Speaker 3: It simultaneously destroys the things we were terrified a limitless
Speaker 3: quantum computer would do, while also crippling the miraculous things
Speaker 3: we hoped it would achieve.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's walk through the practical fallout for everyone listening,
Speaker 2: starting with the good news right. For the last ten years,
Speaker 2: cybersecurity experts have been losing sleep over the quantum apocalypse.
Speaker 2: This sheer terror was that an infinitely scalable quantum computer
Speaker 2: running shores algorithm would easily shatter the RSA mathematical encryption
Speaker 2: schemes that protect literally every thing on the Internet.
Speaker 3: Your bank data, private messages, national security data versus.
Speaker 2: All of it exactly. Classical computers would take billions of
Speaker 2: years to guess the right prime numbers to crack those passwords,
Speaker 2: but a limitless quantum computer could do it in minutes.
Speaker 3: But look at the requirements for Shore's algorithm. To actually
Speaker 3: break RSA encryption. It demands an enormous, perfectly functioning, fault
Speaker 3: tolerant quantum system.
Speaker 2: Which means millions of logical quibts.
Speaker 3: Exactly. We are talking about millions of physical quibots operating
Speaker 3: flawlessly within an uninterrupted continuous Hilbert space, which we just
Speaker 3: established doesn't exist right under the limits Palmer proposes, the
Speaker 3: physical universe will inherently prevent a system from ever getting
Speaker 3: that large or that perfectly continuous.
Speaker 2: That's incredible, So the bad guys won't be able to
Speaker 2: build a machine powerful enough to crack your bank account
Speaker 2: because the universe itself will aggressively stop them.
Speaker 3: The physical limits of information capacity serve as a universal fundamental.
Speaker 2: Firewall, so your encrypted data might actually remain perfectly safe
Speaker 2: from the quantum thread the threat of the quantum apocalypse
Speaker 2: practically vanishes.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 2: However, here's the bad news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the exact same continuous state space required to run
Speaker 3: shores algorithm is also required to run the utopian simulations
Speaker 3: we've been promised.
Speaker 2: Oh man, so things like drug discovery.
Speaker 3: Exactly we envisioned quantum computers solving problems that have an
Speaker 3: almost infinite number of simultaneous variables. The holy grail of
Speaker 3: quantum chemistry is revolutionizing drug discovery by instantly simulating how
Speaker 3: complex proteins fold.
Speaker 2: Right, because proteins are massive molecules.
Speaker 3: Huge and simulating the exact quantum state of every single
Speaker 3: electron in a protein requires precisely the kind of continuous,
Speaker 3: multi dimensional Hilbert space that Palmer argues does not physically exist.
Speaker 2: We were promised a machine that could map out a
Speaker 2: miracle cure for diseases in an afternoon, or optimize hypercomplex
Speaker 2: global logistical.
Speaker 3: Networks climate logistics supply.
Speaker 2: Chains, figuring out the absolute, perfect, most efficient way to
Speaker 2: route every shipping container, truck, and plane on Earth simultaneously
Speaker 2: to completely eliminate carbon waste. But if our volume dial
Speaker 2: only has finite.
Speaker 3: Clicks and a quantum computer cannot process an infinite number
Speaker 3: of simultaneous variable then.
Speaker 2: Those utopian simulations hit the exact same brick wall as
Speaker 2: the code breaking algorithms.
Speaker 3: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the computations
Speaker 3: required for those perfect multi variable simulations demand more continuous
Speaker 3: physical information capacity than the universe can provide.
Speaker 2: So we don't get the miracle machines.
Speaker 3: Well, we will still get incredibly powerful heuristic solvers. We'll
Speaker 3: get better drug discovery tools and more efficient logistics than
Speaker 3: we have today, just not.
Speaker 2: The instant, flawless, godlike simulators exactly.
Speaker 3: Palmer's analysis really grounds the future of quantum computing in
Speaker 3: gritty physical reality. It pulls it right out of the
Speaker 3: theoretical ether of smooth, continuous maths.
Speaker 2: So to recap this whole journey, we started with the
Speaker 2: ultimate sci fi promise, this magical machine that doubles its power,
Speaker 2: endlessly capable of navigating an ever expanding geometric mansion of
Speaker 2: infinite dimensions. But the reality check is that the universe
Speaker 2: is not infinitely smooth. It is discrete, countable, and highly restricted.
Speaker 3: It's a universe that drops the decimals because it simply
Speaker 3: doesn't have the capacity to sustain the infinities are math
Speaker 3: equations assumed, We're there.
Speaker 2: And that profound limitation places a hard physical ceiling right
Speaker 2: around the thousand cubits, a ceiling we are actively driving
Speaker 2: toward right now in labs all over the world. It's
Speaker 2: a physical law that secures our passwords and saves the
Speaker 2: Internet from collapse, but fundamentally slows down the arrival of
Speaker 2: those sci fi miracle cures.
Speaker 3: Which leaves us staring down a truly profound philosophical question,
Speaker 3: Tom all over, what's that? Well? If the physical universe
Speaker 3: fundamentally restricts the amount of information a quantum system can hold,
Speaker 3: if it actively imposes a strict hard speed limit on
Speaker 3: computation and outright refuses to let us use the infinite
Speaker 3: dimensions of our mathematical models, what does that tell us
Speaker 3: about the ultimate nature of reality itself? Oh?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: If reality operates in discrete finite clicks at its lowest
Speaker 3: levels rather than as a smooth infinite continuum, is the
Speaker 3: universe fundamentally more like a high resolution but ultimately limited,
Speaker 3: classical simulation than an infinitely complex quantum realm