Speaker 1: Okay, imagine this. You step into a realm where the
very building blocks of the universe they just don't behave
like we expect them to.
Speaker 2: Write a pretty weird place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where a tiny particle can be like in two
places at once, or it's somehow linked, deeply linked to
another particle miles even light years.
Speaker 2: Away, instantly linked. Yeah, that's a spooky part exactly.
Speaker 1: So what if these bizarre rules, the ones governing this
hidden world. What if they aren't just you know, scientific oddities.
What if that's the fundamental language of reality itself.
Speaker 2: The operating system so to speak, right.
Speaker 1: And what if we could learn to speak that language,
not just to understand the cosmos, but to actually build
machines that think, that calculate, that solve problems using those
exact same rules.
Speaker 2: That's the quantum leap right there.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive today. We're not just exploring
some new tech. We're diving deep into quantum computing. And
this is a field that's really forcing us to rethink, well,
everything understanding of existence, from the tiniest sub atomic flickers
all the way up to the biggest cosmic mystery.
Speaker 2: If it really spans that whole scale.
Speaker 1: We're going to unpack how these machines actually work, the
seemingly impossible problems they might just solve, and also why
their very existence kind of suggests the universe itself might
be well a giant quantum computer.
Speaker 2: It's a mind bending possibility, for sure.
Speaker 1: Our mission for you today is to cut through the noise,
you get past the hype, and give you a clear,
compelling journey right into the heart of quantum computing. We'll
try to distill some incredibly complex ideas into insights that
hopefully really illuminate things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bring out those aha moments.
Speaker 1: Exactly, complete with surprising facts practical implications. So get ready
to stretch your mind a bit and discover connections you
might never have thought about, because this is a deep
dive into the very nature of computation and reality.
Speaker 2: And what's truly remarkable about this whole journey is just
how far reached it all is. We were talking about
physics thought up almost a century ago, concepts from the
nineteen twenties and thirties, right.
Speaker 1: Stuff that must have seemed purely theoretical.
Speaker 2: Then totally and now it's inspiring technology that honestly feels
like it's straight out of science fiction and at the
absolute core of quantum mechanics and completely tied into quantum
computing is something often called the mathematical backbone of the
quantum world. Schrodinger's equation. Ah, yes, the famous one, the
famous one. But just calling it an equation or a
formula it doesn't really do a justice, does it.
Speaker 1: No. It feels bigger than that.
Speaker 2: It really is. Think of it more like a like
a living blueprint, a blueprint of probability.
Speaker 1: I find that so fascinating because when you look at
Schrodinger's equation, it's not just you know, dry symbols on
a page. It's almost lyrical in how it describes the
dance of particles over time, their evolution, yeah, how they interact,
and maybe most profoundly, how probabilities aren't just like part
of reality, but how they actually shape reality its most
fundamental level.
Speaker 2: That's the key insight. It governs the how.
Speaker 1: For me, it's like finding the universe's own instruction manual
for its smallest, most baffling components. I mean, without that
one equation, our whole framework for understanding everything at the
subatomic scale, it just falls apart completely.
Speaker 2: It's not just foundational. It really is the ground we
stand on for all of quantum mechanics. It really is,
and it underpins everything. Yeah, from the strong bonds holding
atoms together to make molecules like the stuff we're made
of exactly to the subtle ways light interacts with matter
all around us. So when you connect this to the
bigger picture, it becomes clear that our basic grasp of chemistry,
of biology, the stability of well everything we see in touch,
it all rests on this incredibly elegant mathematical construct.
Speaker 1: It's the bedrock, yeah, but also the key that unlocks
so much.
Speaker 2: It really is so okay.
Speaker 1: Given this profound understanding of how the universe really works
at its core, the national next question for me is
what if we could go beyond just understanding this equation
and actually build machines that mirror its complexity.
Speaker 2: Right, Machines that operate on those rules.
Speaker 1: Machines that don't just calculate in the way we're used to,
but literally think in probabilities, running on the same bizarre
rules that govern sub atomic particles. This isn't just about
making computers faster. It feels like a fundamentally different kind
of computation.
Speaker 2: It's a paradigm shift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quantum computers aren't just advanced calculators. They are, in
a very real way, a glooms into how the universe
truly operates and maybe maybe how we can work with
it to solve problems that have always seemed impossible.
Speaker 2: And this brings up a really critical piece of history
for decades, classical computers, Yeah, you know, the ones we
use every day. Despite getting faster and more powerful.
Speaker 1: All the time, War's Law and all that.
Speaker 2: Right, they consistently struggled, often hitting this like insurmountable wall
when trying to simulate quantum systems. The challenge wasn't just
processing speed, though that was part of it.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just about needing more power, not entirely.
Speaker 2: The real barrier was the inherent, just baked in exponential
complexity of quantum physics itself. Trying to model these intricate
quantum interactions on a classical machine, it was like trying
to paint a hyperrealistic three D world using only I
don't know, a single black and white pixel.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, Yeah, not going to work.
Speaker 2: So a fundamental mismatch, a conceptual roadblock that just seemed impossible.
Speaker 1: To get passed for a long time, and this seemingly
impossible challenge started to capture the imagination of some really
brilliant minds. Back in nineteen eighty there was a physicist
Paul Benioff at Argonne National Lab.
Speaker 2: Ah Yes, Benioff.
Speaker 1: He proposed this groundbreaking theoretical model. He pictured a computer
that didn't use ordinary digital bits, you know, the zeros
and ones we.
Speaker 2: All know the basis of everything classical, right.
Speaker 1: Instead, his machine would run on quibits, these tiny units
that could exist in multiple states at the same time,
following those weird probabilistic rules of quantum mechanics. He actually
called it a quantum Turing.
Speaker 2: Machine, which is a huge conceptual eleak to me.
Speaker 1: That feels like the first real, concrete step from just
abstract quantum theory towards a well a theoretical computing device,
but still a device. I bet at the time it
must have sounded like pure science fiction, maybe even crazy
talk to some people.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it was way out there. And what's fascinating
is that around the same time, two other visionaries, completely
independently came up with a strikingly similar and just as
radical idea who were they Uri Mannin, a Russian mathematician,
and the famous American physicist Richard Fyeman Fineman. Okay, both
of them argued that to truly understand and accurately simulate
quantum systems, we couldn't just build faster versions of the
computers we already had, you know, they said, we'd need
computers that inherently worked like the quantum systems themselves.
Speaker 1: So computers built using quantum principles.
Speaker 2: Exactly built upon quantum mechanics. This was an incredibly buld
vision back then, really anticipating a future where computation wasn't
just about crunching more data faster, but about totally different
ways of processing information, ways that actually mirrored the nature
of reality. It laid the intellectual foundation for quantum computing
as we know it.
Speaker 1: And it didn't take too long for these like really
out there ideas to spark something practical beyond just simulating physics.
I mean, this is where it gets really interesting, right,
the application.
Speaker 2: Moving from theory to practice.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, two brilliant researchers Charles Henry Bennett
and Giles Brossard. They were directly inspired by Feineman's ideas
about harnessing quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: Dan in Bisard, Yeah, the BB eighty four protocol.
Speaker 1: Right. They took these strange quantum principles and applied them
to something incredibly practical, cryptography, secure communication. They realized that
the bizarre behaviors of particles like photons could be used
to create a communication system that wasn't just secure, but
fundamentally physically unbreakable.
Speaker 2: That's the revolutionary part. Unbreakable by the laws of physics.
Speaker 1: This concept quantum key distribution, or QKD. It basically turned
the abstract rules of quantum physics into this amazingly powerful
tool for protecting secrets.
Speaker 2: And what's so profound about QKD is why it's secure.
It's not based on complex math problems that are just
hard right now but might be broken later by a
faster computer or some clever new algorithm.
Speaker 1: Like current encryption basically right, which relies on math being
hard exactly.
Speaker 2: QKD security is guaranteed by the fundamental laws of physics themselves.
If an eavesdropper, let's call her Ella, tries to intercept
the quantum.
Speaker 1: Key, our classic eavesdropper Ella, right, the very act of
her observing or measuring the quantum particles inherently changes their state.
Speaker 2: It leaves an undeniable trace. It's not a computational barrier
she has to overcome, it's a physical one.
Speaker 1: Observation changes the system, so you can't sneak a peak
without messing things up precisely.
Speaker 2: This completely redefines data security. It offers a level of
assurance we just couldn't imagine before.
Speaker 1: Okay, so walk through how that actually works. Let's use
the classic setup. Albert and Catherine want to share a
secret key, and Ella.
Speaker 2: Is listening in the standard scenario.
Speaker 1: So Albert starts by sending Catherine a stream of single
photons individual particles of light, and each photon represents a
bit of information a zero or one, but it's encoded
in its quantum state. Maybe it's polarization, like whether it's
wiggling up and down or side to side, chosen randomly.
Speaker 2: And here's where the quantum magic, or maybe the quantum
weirdness comes in that measurement problem. If Ella intercepts these
photons to read their state to find out the key,
the very act of her measuring them instantly changes that
quantum state. It's not like copying a digital file where
the original stay is the same. It's more like trying
to touch soap bubble.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, pop.
Speaker 2: Exactly the moment you interact it pops. Its original state
is gone altered forever. This immediate change leaves clear, undeniable
proof of tampering that core quantum idea observation changes the observed.
It makes passive eavesdropping impossible without being detected.
Speaker 1: Right, and this is the genius part. To make sure
the line is secure, Albert and Catherine don't use all
the photons right away. First they get on an open
channel like a regular phone line.
Speaker 2: Something Elkin here, that's fine, and.
Speaker 1: They publicly compare notes on a small, randomly chosen subset
of the photons they exchanged. They just check if their
measurements match for those specific photons.
Speaker 2: Okay, So they sacrifice a few photons to test.
Speaker 1: The channel exactly. If their measurements for that sample match perfectly,
they can be incredibly confident that nobody intercepted the stream,
that the key is safe. Then they can use the
rest of the photons, the ones they didn't discuss, as
a perfectly secret cryptographic key. Got it, But and this
is the key if there's any mismatch in that public comparison.
Speaker 2: Even one photon difference, they.
Speaker 1: Know immediately that ELLA or some noise interfered, they see
the trace. In that case, they just scrap that key
entirely and start the whole process over again.
Speaker 2: Uh okay, self checking totally.
Speaker 1: This back and forth checking is what makes QKD so secure.
Its security relies directly on those fundamental laws of physics,
not just computational difficulty. That's why it's considered secure even
against future powerful quantum computers.
Speaker 2: And this isn't just theory anymore.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: People often ask if this is just lab stuff.
Speaker 1: Good point, No, it's not just theory. QKD is actually
being used right now in really sensitive areas Reil world deployment, yeah,
government communications, protecting classified info. Also in financial systems where
securing massive transactions is absolutely critical.
Speaker 2: It provides that fundamental layer of defense, ensuring secret stay secret.
Even as we move towards an era where current encryption
might become vulnerable to quantum attacks. It's quantum mechanics working
in the real world today.
Speaker 1: Now, let's pause for a second and be fair to
our trustee classical computers, the ones in your phone, your laptop,
the massive supercomputers running simulations. They're not you know, they're
not lame.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, definitely not. They're amazing achievements.
Speaker 1: I mean, I owe my laptop a lot right now.
They've totally transformed the world, given us the Internet, took
us to the moon. They're incredible at what they do.
Speaker 2: But but it's always a butt.
Speaker 1: When it comes to tackling some of the universes really
really complex mind bending problems, they start to show their limits.
Speaker 2: And this is where they hit that ceiling we talked about.
At their core, classical computers work with bits, simple binary things,
zeros and ones on or off, like tiny light switches.
Speaker 1: Millions or billions of them, flipping very fast, exactly.
Speaker 2: But each operation happens one after the other sequentially.
Speaker 1: Think about weather forecasting systems. They take huge amounts of
atmospheric data, temperature, pressure, wind.
Speaker 2: All broken down into bits.
Speaker 1: Or your digital camera. It captures an image, turns it
into millions of pixels, each stored as a specific sequence
of bits. Every single calculation is just a long, precise
chain of these bits flipping according to instructions.
Speaker 2: And while this sequential approach is great for most things,
we do, emails, websites, documents. It becomes painfully impossibly slow
when problems get really complex, like what kind of problems
like simulating the intricate dance of atoms inside large molecules,
or solving massive optimization puzzles with billions of options like
finding the absolute best route for thousands of delivery trucks, or,
as we mentioned, trying to crack modern encryption.
Speaker 1: Because they have to check everything one by one.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, they're stuck solving one possibility at a time,
step by laborious step. Even if they do it incredibly
fast for certain problems, the number of steps becomes astronomical.
It's like trying to find the exit in a giant
maze by trying every single path sequentially. Thorough sure, but
incredibly inefficient for some mazes.
Speaker 1: Okay, so classical is sequential. How are quantum computers different?
Speaker 2: They play a completely different game. They use quibts, and
thanks to this amazing quantum principle called superposition, qudits can
exist in multiple states at the same time.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold on multiple states.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Instead of being definitely a zero or definitely a
one like a classical bit, a quibit can be a
zero or a one, or a probabilistic mix of both, all.
Speaker 1: At once, so it's like a dimmer switch instead of
an on off switch. But even weirder.
Speaker 2: Kind of A popular analogy is a spinning coin. While
it's spinning before it lands, it's not heads or tails,
it's sort of both in potential until you measure it
force it to land. Then it becomes definite heads or tails.
Aquibit is like that spinning coin.
Speaker 1: Okay, spinning coin, I can picture that. How does that
help solve problems faster?
Speaker 2: Let's use that pon code analogy. Imagine a four digit pin.
A classical computer tests them one by one ers or
zero one size says zero zero two right, takes time up.
Speaker 1: To ten thousand tries in the worst case exactly.
Speaker 2: A quantum computer using superposition could effectively test all ten
thousand combinations simultaneously.
Speaker 1: WHOA.
Speaker 2: It processes the problem across all those potential states at once. Then,
using clever quantum algorithms, it can kind of amplify the
probability of finding the right answer and cancel out the
wrong ones, homing in on the solution almost instantly, so.
Speaker 1: It explores all paths at once.
Speaker 2: That's the essence of it. This parallel processing capability on
a scale classical computers can't dream of, is the incredible advantage.
Speaker 1: Mind blown. Okay, but you mentioned another weird quantum thing, entanglement.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, entanglement if superposition wasn't strange enough. Entanglement is
where two or more quivots become linked in this deep way.
Their fates are intertwined, linked hat such that the state
of one quibbot instantly influences the state of the other,
no matter how far apart they are miles light years,
it doesn't matter. Measure one and you instantly know something
about the other.
Speaker 1: That's the spooky action at a distance Einstein didn't like.
Speaker 2: That's the very one. You've found it deeply unsettling. It's
not communication faster than light. It's more like they share
a single unified quantum state, a shared reality, even when separated.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's hard to grasp. How does that help a computer?
Speaker 2: Imagine like a team of super smart problem solvers, but
instead of talking or emailing, they have this instant telepathic connection.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: They instantly share insights, coordinate their attacks on a problem,
perfectly synchronized, even across vast distances. They act like one
cohesive unit. This allows quantum computers to tackle challenges that
would take a classical computer essentially working alone, step by step,
maybe millions of years.
Speaker 1: So entanglement links the quibits together, lets them work as
a team in a way.
Speaker 2: Yes, this profound interconnectedness allows them to process and correlate
information in ways classical bits just can't. A single quibt
isn't just storage, It's a portal to this interconnected quantum
possibility space.
Speaker 1: Okay, superposition lets them be many things at once. Entanglement
links them together. The scale must be incredible.
Speaker 2: It truly is. This is the part that really breaks
your brain. With just three hundred stable quibits, only three
hundred working together through superposition and entanglement, Yeah, a quantum
computer could theoretically represent more or states simultaneously than there
are particles in the observable universe.
Speaker 1: Wait what say that again?
Speaker 2: Three hundred quibits can hold more information states at the
same time than the total number of atoms in every star,
every planet, every galaxy we can see.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't seem possible.
Speaker 2: It's the power of exponential growth two to the power
of three hundred is just an unimaginably vast number. Every atom, star,
galaxy combined doesn't even come close.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, just wow.
Speaker 2: It really makes you pause and think, doesn't it. What
incredible previously unimaginable problems could we actually unlock with that
kind of computational power?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Seriously, So where would we even apply that? What
are the big targets?
Speaker 2: Well, one major area is simulating the molecular world. For
classical computers, this is a nightmare. Why because the complexity
just explodes. Add one more atom to the molecule you're simulating,
and the number of quantum interactions you need to track
can double, or worse, it grows exponentially.
Speaker 1: So simulating even a medium sized molecule is impossible.
Speaker 2: Pretty much, simulating a complex chemical reaction maybe involving just
a few dozen atoms could easily demand more classical computing
power than currently exists on the entire planet. It's just
two vast too complex for step by step calculation. But
quantum computers, quantum computers, because they operate on quantum principles,
can handle this kind of complexity much more naturally, almost easily,
relatively speaking.
Speaker 1: Because they can explore all the possibilities at once, exactly.
Speaker 2: Exploring multiple quantum states simultaneously through superposition, using entanglement to
manage the correlations. They can map and analyze these intricate
molecular interactions rapidly.
Speaker 1: And the implications of that are huge.
Speaker 2: Think drug discovery testing billions of potential drug molecules virtually
to see how they interact with targets in the body,
finding new medicines potentially orders of magnitude faster than we
can now That would be incredible. Or material science designing
brand new materials with specific desirable properties from the atom
up superconductors, better cataly lists, stronger alloys, and just fundamentally
deepening our understanding of chemistry and biology, the building blocks
of life itself.
Speaker 1: Okay, drug discovery, materials. What else you mentioned encryption earlier?
Speaker 2: Ah? Yes, the elephant in the room for cybersecurity. Our
modern online world, banking, secure messaging, e commerce, it all
relies heavily on encryption.
Speaker 1: Like RSA, which we set is based on math being hard.
Speaker 2: Precisely, specifically the extreme difficulty for classical computers to factor
very large numbers into their original prime components.
Speaker 1: Let's break that down a bit. How does RSI work
simply like for online shopping.
Speaker 2: Okay, imagine you buy that book online. You need to
send your credit card numbers securely. Your browser uses the
bookstore's public key, like an open padlock everyone can use
to scramble or encrypt your details.
Speaker 1: So anyone can lock the box.
Speaker 2: Right, but only the bookstore has the corresponding private key,
the unique key that can unlock that specific padlock. So
even though the locked box travels over the public Internet,
only the bookstore can open it and read your details.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Where does the hard math come in?
Speaker 2: The security lies in how incredibly hard it is to
figure out the private key just by looking at the
public key. It boils down to this. Multiplying two huge
prime numbers together is easy for a.
Speaker 1: Computer like seven times eleven is seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Easy exactly, but on a much bigger scale. But going
the other way, taking the huge result like seventy seven
and finding the original primes seven and eleven, that's called factoring,
and it's extremely difficult for large numbers for classical computers.
Speaker 1: How difficult.
Speaker 2: Well, the standard for secure communication now is often RSA
twenty forty eight, a number with six hundred and seventeen digits.
The largest similar number factor took the equivalent of two
thousand years of standard computing power. Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, so classical computers are terrible.
Speaker 2: At factoring, which is why RSA is secure today.
Speaker 1: But there's a quantum butt.
Speaker 2: There's a quantum butt. In nineteen ninety four, a mathematician
named Peter Shore developed Shores algorithm. The quantum algorithms specifically
designed to factor large numbers efficiently efficiently, meaning meaning a
sufficiently large quantum computer running Shores algorithm could break RSA
encryption potentially in hours or days, something that would take
a classical computer billions of years.
Speaker 1: So all current encryption is potentially vulnerable.
Speaker 2: In the long run. Yes, it's a massive wake up
call for cybersecurity. It's driving the development of new post
quantum or quantum resistant encryption methods that even quantum computers
can't break.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's huge. What about less world breaking applications?
Speaker 2: Uh huh right. Another area where quantum computers are expected
to shine is in complex optimization problems.
Speaker 1: Optimization like making things more efficient exactly.
Speaker 2: Think about real world logistics routing a fleet of delivery
trucks to minimize fuel and time across a huge city.
Speaker 1: The traveling salesman problem kind of.
Speaker 2: That's a classic example, yes, or scheduling thousands of flights
globally minimizing delays, maximizing plane usage, or even managing tracks
flow in a big city to prevent gridlock. These problems
have astronomical numbers of variables and constraints.
Speaker 1: And classical computers struggle with finding the absolute best answer.
Speaker 2: They often do they use clever tricks, heuristics, approximations to
find a good enough solution because exploring every single possibility
is just two time consuming.
Speaker 1: But quantum computers.
Speaker 2: Quantum computers, by exploring that vast landscape of possibility simultaneously,
can potentially find the true, mathematically optimal solution much much faster,
sifting through billions of options to find the perfect path
or configuration in seconds or minutes.
Speaker 1: So it's not just about convenience, oh.
Speaker 2: Much more than that, it's about massive efficiency gains, saving
huge amounts of energy, time resources across logistics, finance, manufacturing,
supply chains, moving from good enough to perfectly optimized on
a grand scale.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've talked about simulating molecules, breaking codes, optimizing everything.
It sounds like a magic.
Speaker 2: War ah, and here comes the reality check.
Speaker 1: Right, So, after all that hype, you might be thinking, Okay,
quantum computers are the answer to everything. Are they going
to replace my phone?
Speaker 2: And the answer is a resounding no.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. As amazing as they are, there's a big catch.
They are not a universal effix. In fact, for most
everyday tasks, they're completely useless.
Speaker 2: You've nailed it. They just aren't designed for the straightforward,
step by step deterministic things we rely on classical computers.
Speaker 1: For like checking email, streaming Netflix, browsing the.
Speaker 2: Web, or even running the physics engine in your favorite
video game. These all have clear sequential solutions. Classical computers
are perfect for executing those instructions precisely and quickly.
Speaker 1: So using a quantum computer for email would be.
Speaker 2: Total overkill, fee and painfully impractical. The complexity, the cost,
the specialized environment needed. It'd be like using a Formula
one car to go grocery shopping. It could do it,
but why would you?
Speaker 1: Okay, so not for everyday tasks. But even when they
are the right tool, there are still big challenges.
Speaker 2: Right, It's not easy, far from easy. Remember how they
calculate all possibilities at once using superposition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the spinning coin thing.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the twist. When you actually measure the result
that delicate superposition collapses, you don't instantly get the single
perfect answer served on a platter.
Speaker 1: Oh what do you get?
Speaker 2: You get a probabilistic outcome. The quantum state collapses into
one definite state, maybe zero, maybe one, and the answer
you observe is just one possibility, though hopefully the correct
answer is a higher probability.
Speaker 1: So you might get the wrong answer sometimes.
Speaker 2: Potentially yes, or rather the outcome is probabilistic. To get
a reliable answer, especially for complex problems, you often have
to run the same quantum computation many many times, okay, repeatedly,
and then you look at the pattern of results, the
statistics to figure out the most likely correct solution. Without
very carefully designed quantum algorithms that amplify the right answers probability,
all that quantum power just it's lost in randomness.
Speaker 1: So the algorithms are crucial for making sense of the
probabilistic results.
Speaker 2: Absolutely essential. It's not just raw power, it's cleverly harnessing
that power.
Speaker 1: Okay, challenge one probabilistic results. What else you mentioned fragility.
Speaker 2: Before, Yes, the Achilles heel. Perhaps quibbets are incredibly sensitive
little things. They exist in this delicate quantum state that's
astonishingly easy to disturb. How easy The slightest bit of heat,
tiny vibrations, even stray electromagnetic fiels from nearby equipment, any
noise from the environment can cause the Kippet's quantum state
to decohere. Decohere meaning meaning it collapses prematurely loses its
quantum information. That computation basically fails. It's like trying to
build that sand castle while the tide's coming in, the
wind's blowing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound stable.
Speaker 2: It's a huge engineering challenge. Yeah. To counteract this, quantum
computers need extreme conditions like what like temperatures near absolute zero,
colder than deep space, usually achieved with these complex, expensive
machines called dilution refrigerators. Wow. They also need intense shielding
from any outside noise, magnetic fields, vibrations, often house in
specially built labs. Maintaining this pristine environment is incredibly difficult
and costly, and even then errors still happen.
Speaker 1: Which leads to another problem. I guess error correction exactly.
Speaker 2: Because quibbets are so prone to errors from noise and decoherence,
you can't just add more quibbits and expect better results.
The errors can multiply. You need quantum error correction.
Speaker 1: How does that work? Is it like spell check?
Speaker 2: Uh? Huh? Not quite that simple. It involves encoding the
quantum information redundantly across multiple physical quibots, use extra quibits
essentially as backups to constantly check for errors in the
main logical quibot and correct them.
Speaker 1: So you need way more physical quibts than the number
you actually want to compete.
Speaker 2: With, vastly more. This is a critical point. A problem
might theoretically need say one thousand perfect error corrected logical
quibts to solve, but because of the overhead needed for
error correction, achieving those one thousand logical quibuts might require millions,
maybe even tens of millions, of raw physical quibots.
Speaker 1: Millions.
Speaker 2: Really, that's the current thinking for full tolerant quantum computing
ness and building a machine with millions of stable, interconnected,
controllable physical quibots. That is far, far beyond what we
can do today.
Speaker 1: So where are we now practically? How many quibbits do
current machines have.
Speaker 2: Most quantum computers today are still prototypes Google Sycamore, IBM's Condoor,
Righetti's Aspen systems. They typically have a few dozen, maybe
up to one hundred or slightly more physical quibots. Still
incredibly impressive feats of.
Speaker 1: Engineering, but a long way from millions, A.
Speaker 2: Very long way to tackle those really big dream problems
breaking RSA, encryption, routinely designing complex drugs from scratch, we
need thousands, more likely millions of stable, error corrected logical quibots.
We're just not there yet. Significant progress is being made,
but the gap is still huge.
Speaker 1: Okay, So summing this part up, quantum computers are highly
specialized tools, amazing for certain.
Speaker 2: Problems, factoring, specific simulations, some optimization, but.
Speaker 1: Not general purpose machines that will replace our laptops or phones.
Speaker 2: Definitely not If a problem doesn't naturally benefit from superposition
and entanglement. If it's straightforward and sequential, a classical computer
will almost always be faster, cheaper, and much.
Speaker 1: More practical, So they complement, not replace.
Speaker 2: That's the key takeaway. They won't replace classical computers for
the vast majority of tasks. But they will complement them,
pushing the boundaries of what's possible, letting us tackle challenges
fundamentally beyond classical reach, understanding the universe, new drugs, new materials.
That's their potential. Not making your email load.
Speaker 1: Faster, you know, it's almost funny, but also telling the
quotes from the pioneers of quantum physics. Neil's Borr famously
said something like anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics hasn't
understood it, right.
Speaker 2: It highlights the inherent weirdness.
Speaker 1: When Richard Fyneman, with his usual wit, just flat out
said nobody understands quantum physicals.
Speaker 2: Ah hah, Yeah, if Fyneman said it.
Speaker 1: Even Einstein, whose work helped start it all, he got
really uncomfortable with where it led, famously called entanglement spooky
action and apparently said quantum mechanics didn't make sense and
he wished he'd never gotten involved.
Speaker 2: It is actually kind of comforting, isn't it to know
that even these towering intellects, the very founders of the field,
wrestled deeply with these concepts. They struggled to fit it
into their intuition about how the universe should work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes you feel a bit better about finding
it confusing exactly.
Speaker 2: It shows how profoundly quantum mechanics challenges our basic assumptions
about reality. It's a journey of understanding humanity is still on.
Speaker 1: But despite that weirdness, that foundational discomfort. Fast forward to
today and we're actually using these principles to build these
incredible machines like Google recently made news with a new
chip called Willow.
Speaker 2: That's right, the Willow chip one hundred and five cobit processor.
And what's really significant about Willow isn't just the quib
ac count, but the strides it represents in error correction.
Speaker 1: Ah, tackling that fragility problem we talked about precisely.
Speaker 2: We know quantum systems are noisy errors creep in Willow
demonstrated much better error correction performance, especially showing how the
correction improves as you add more quippets, which is crucial
for scaling up. It's a vital step towards making quantum
computers more reliable, more practical, closer to being truly fault tolerant.
Speaker 1: And what kind of practical performance are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Was there a specific feat there was reportedly Willow solved
a specific, carefully chosen computational problem in just under five minutes.
Speaker 1: Okay, five minutes sounds fast, but compared to what compared.
Speaker 2: To the estimated time it would take the world's most
powerful classical supercomputers to solve that same problem longer than
the age of the universe.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, that's that's the difference.
Speaker 2: It's a clear demonstration of quantum advantage for specific task,
albeit in a controlled lab setting, and the underlying principles,
the improved air handling, that's directly applicable to pushing forward
on real world challenges designing new materials, optimizing complex supply chains,
accelerating drug discovery by simulating molecules more accurately.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating how this is developing alongside another huge technology,
Artificial intelligence. AI has been dominating the headlines right absolutely.
Speaker 2: AI strengths are incredible learning from massive data sets, finding
complex patterns, solving problems like deep minds, alpha fold predicting
protein structures, which was a.
Speaker 1: Huge deal for biology and medicine.
Speaker 2: A massive deal. AI is fast, adaptable and tackles problems
we once thought impossible for computers.
Speaker 1: But quantum computing. As we've said, works differently. It's not
just faster, it's tackling problems classical computers, even with AI helping,
fundamentally cannot solve at all.
Speaker 2: Right. It uses those unique quantum properties superposition, entanglement, interference
to process information in ways totally alien to classical bits
and AI algorithms based on them. That's the core of
quantum advantage.
Speaker 1: Is there some overlap or competition? I remember reading something
about AI starting to encroach on quantum territory.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, that's an interesting point raised by people like
Demisisabas at Deep Mind. The idea is that sometimes by
training AI on enormous data sets and cleverly incorporating physical
rules into the AI models, you can get results similar
to what a quantum computer might achieve, but without needing
the actual quantum hardware.
Speaker 1: So AI can sometimes fake it till it makes it
find good enough answers in.
Speaker 2: Certain specific domains. Potentially, yes, AI might provide very good
approximations for problems we once thought only quantum computers could
tackle effectively.
Speaker 1: So is it AI versus quantum one winner takes all?
Speaker 2: I really don't think so. The real story isn't replacement.
It's about figuring out where each technology truly excels AI
is phenomenal for data driven problems, pattern recognition, prediction, learning
from experience exactly, but has gale and a certain kind
of complexity, especially those rooted in quantum mechanics itself. Quantum
computing becomes the necessary tool, offering pathways to exact solutions
that classical or aisystems can only guess at or can't
reach at all.
Speaker 1: So they're complementary and not competitors.
Speaker 2: That's the most productive way to see it. Both are
fundamentally changing how we solve problems, and together they could
unlock entirely new frontiers in science, medicine, engineering, things we
can barely imagine yet.
Speaker 1: Thinking about simulating reality, that wormhole experiment you mentioned from
late twenty twenty two sounds absolutely wild. Using Google's Sycamore.
Speaker 2: Chip, it was a landmark experiment. Absolutely Yeah, physicists simulated
behavior that resembled information traveling through a wormhole. Now, let's
be super clear.
Speaker 1: No actual holes in space time were created in the lab.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, definitely not, no risk of falling into another dimension.
But it was an extraordinary window into how information might behave,
how it might travel in the theoretical scenarios described by
wormhole as.
Speaker 1: So how did they even approach that? What did they simulate?
Speaker 2: It centered on linking quantum entanglement with theoretical wormholes. They
used a framework from quantum gravity, specifically a simplified model
related to the holographic principle.
Speaker 1: Whilographic principle, like a three D reality encoded on a
two D.
Speaker 2: Surface, loosely speaking, yes, the idea that the physics within
a volume of space can be described by the physics
on its boundary. They encoded quantum states onto the sycamore
quibts and manipulated them with very specific algorithms designed to
mimic the dynamics of information passing through a theoretical wormhole
an Einstein Rosen bridge.
Speaker 1: And what did they find? Did it work?
Speaker 2: They observed phenomena how the quantum information evolved and seemed
to transfer that precisely matched the theoretical predictions for information
traversing such a wormhole. It was groundbreaking because it experimentally
bridged concepts from quantum mechanics and general relativity, two pillars
of physics that are notoriously hard to unite.
Speaker 1: So even though it wasn't a real wormhole. It showed
quantum computers can test these really exotic physics theorias exactly.
Speaker 2: It demonstrated the power of quantum computers as simulators for
exploring the universe's most enigmatic phenomena, testing ideas previously vined
to blackboards and thought experiments.
Speaker 1: Which brings us back to that really profound parallel Quantum
computers work using superposition, entanglement, interference.
Speaker 2: The core rules of the quantum realm.
Speaker 1: And the universe itself seems to operate on those exact
same rules at its most fundamental level. Particles in superposition
until measured entanglement, connecting things across space, probabilities driving outcomes.
It really does feel like the universe is running some
kind of massive cosmic program.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it, calculating its own evolution moment by moment according
to quantum rules.
Speaker 1: Is that just a metaphor or is there a serious
idea behind it?
Speaker 2: It leads directly to a really mind bending hypothesis championed
by physicist Seth Lloyd, among others. What if the universe is,
in a literle sense, a giant quantum computer.
Speaker 1: There's a whole universe as a computer.
Speaker 2: Yes, in this view, every single interaction between particles, every
quantum event, is a fundamental computational step in this ongoing,
incredibly complex cosmic calculation. Everything we see, galaxies, moving, stars,
burning electrons, spinning is part of the output of this computation.
Speaker 1: That's a radical reframing of everything it absolutely is.
Speaker 2: It suggests that a quantum computer isn't just a tool
we built. It's a system that inherently mimics the universe's
own operating principles. It considers multiple possibilities at once, just
like the universe seems to explore potential outcomes before one
is observed.
Speaker 1: So that worm whole simulation. If quantum computers can simulate
bits of quantum gravity, bits of the universe's rules, could they,
in theory simulate the whole thing or parts of it.
Speaker 2: That's the implication The worm whole experiment becomes even more significant.
Then it showed that the principles governing the universe, like
quantum gravity, can be replicated and probed in a machine
we built. We're essentially creating tiny, controllable models of the
cosmos itself, allowing us to poke and prodded its deepest mysteries. Precisely,
it's not just about faster calculations. It's about mimicking the
universe's fundamental processes to understand reality itself. Simulating wormholes might
just be the beginning. Maybe one day modeling black hole interiors,
understanding dark matter, simulating the Big Bang, quantrum computers could
give us the tools.
Speaker 1: It really makes you reconsider the grand design, if there
is one. It's about getting at the nature of reality.
Speaker 2: It truly is.
Speaker 1: You know. We often say the universe is written in math,
but maybe it's also written in complexity, a complexity our
human brains constantly try to simplify.
Speaker 2: Like take a coin, flip, Okay, simple enough, heads or tails?
Speaker 1: Clip it again another, heads, keep going. If you flipped
it twenty times, what are the odds you'd get the
exact same sequence as me flipping my coin twenty times?
Speaker 2: Vanishingly small? There are over a million possible sequences for
twenty flips. Getting the same one as highly unlikely.
Speaker 1: Okay, now let's ramp it up forget twenty What about
one hundred folips? Or let's go really big, two hundred
and sixty six coin flips?
Speaker 2: Okay, two hundred and sixty six flips. The number of
possible sequences is two raised to the power of two hundred.
Speaker 1: And sixty six, which sounds big, but how big?
Speaker 2: It's astronomically big. It's vastly larger than the estimated number
of atoms in the entire observable universe.
Speaker 1: Whoa more sequences than atoms.
Speaker 2: Orders and orders of magnitude more. Let's try to imagine
counting them. If you counted one sequence per second, you
couldn't finish in your lifetime or billions of lifetimes.
Speaker 1: What if everyone on Earth helped billions of people.
Speaker 2: Still wouldn't make a dent. What if every person had
a supercomputer counting ten billion sequences per second? Getting closer,
not even close. Let's go crazy, ten billion Earth like planets,
each with eight billion people each with the computer accounting
ten billion sequences per second. Yeah, even then, it would
take about one hundred times the current age of the
universe just to count all the possible sequences from two
hundred and sixty six coin flips.
Speaker 1: That number is just broken. It's beyond comprehendi it truly is.
And why hammer this point because it shows something profound
about us as humans. We're drawn to simplicity, we crave it,
but we live in a universe that is fundamentally overwhelmingly complex.
Speaker 2: It touches on our cognitive biases, how science works, and
even the limits of our technology. Classical, in quantum, we
simplify because that's how we can process things like.
Speaker 1: The old joke about losing your keys in the dark alley,
but only looking under the street.
Speaker 2: Light, because that's where the light is. Exactly. We focus
on this simple, manageable bits of reality because that's what
our brains evolve to handle. But the simple stuff, that's
the exception, not the rule, most complexities out there in
the shadows.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's make it concrete with the coins again. If
I ask you to predict the outcome of two hundred
and sixty six flips, it sounds impossible, right, too many options.
Speaker 2: These that way.
Speaker 1: But if you have a coin and ten minutes, you
can just flip it two hundred and sixty six times
and write down the results. Problem solved. You performed an algorithm,
flip the coin and got an output.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a sequence deterministic process like a classical computer
following instructions.
Speaker 1: But now imagine a different scenario. Two hundred and sixty
six coin flips, but each flip somehow depends on all
the previous flips in some chaotic, unpredictable way.
Speaker 2: Like the coin has a memory of its entire history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that history influences the next flip in a complex,
nonlinear fashion. To figure that out, you'd need to track
every possible branching history, every dependency, which, as we saw,
is impossible. That's unaccountable complexity.
Speaker 2: No classical computer could simulate that vast, tangled web of possibilities.
Speaker 1: There's one situation, though, where it is simple. When each
coin toss is completely independent. Heads are tails fifty to
fifty chants totally unrelated to the last flip. That's the
version we all.
Speaker 2: Learn because it's mathematically tractable. We can handle probabilities of
independent events exactly.
Speaker 1: It only seems obvious because that independence makes it manageable.
We design the problem to be easy by assuming independence.
Real life, the universe is usually messier, more interconnected, unless
we force it into our simple boxes.
Speaker 2: And this reflects directly in our technology. Classical computers are
essentially built to produce sequences that look like independent coin
flips by flipping transistors. But here's the thing. Your computer
will never generate every possible sequence of bits. It's designed
to stick to the simpler, more predictable paths. If it
tried to explore true randomness or deep complexity, you would
likely crash.
Speaker 1: So we build them to stay on the easy path.
Speaker 2: We build them to solve problems we know how to handle.
We constrain them. That's why modeling truly complex systems of weather,
protein folding, traffic flow is so hard. Classically, those systems
have deep interdependencies, are simplified models struggle with.
Speaker 1: Computers are only as smart as the simplicity we force on.
Speaker 2: Them, or the specific types of complexity we've figured out
how to encode. And this even applies to quantum computers.
While they leverage quantum mechanics to tackle certain complex problems
incredibly well well like factoring Shore's algorithm, right, they aren't
magic wands for all complexity. A quantum computer won't solve
every problem just because it can handle more states than atoms.
It will only solve the problems we can successfully map
onto its architecture, the ones we design specific algorithms for.
Speaker 1: So even quantum computing is about finding solvable complexity, not conquering.
Speaker 2: All complexity exactly. We don't need to manage every single
possible quantum state, just like your laptop doesn't track every
possible electron configuration within it. We find ways to harness
the useful complexity.
Speaker 1: So the universe is complex, that's just a fact. Our technology,
classical or quantum, doesn't wish that complexity away.
Speaker 2: No, it gives us new ways to map certain aspects
of that complexity onto problems we can solve. It's not
about simplifying the universe, it's about building better tools to
interact with its true complex nature.
Speaker 1: It's a crucial point we simplify to understand, but we
need to remember we're often just seeing a small part
of the picture.
Speaker 2: That complexity isn't an obstinate to somehow eliminate. It's a
fundamental aspect of reality to appreciate. Our tech helps us
probe and manage specific facets of it, but doesn't make
it disappear. As we enter this quantum era, the focus
needs to be on understanding the science, letting go of
the myths, and seeing what's truly possible.
Speaker 1: Wow, what a journey we've taken today from those fundamental,
almost poetic equations of quantum mechanics right up to the
bleeding edge of quantum computer prototypes. We've explored how these
revolutionary machines give us this entirely new lens to view
the universe.
Speaker 2: Seeing their incredible potential power for things like cracking codes,
simulating molecules.
Speaker 1: But also grappling with their very real limitations, the immense
practical challenges, and actually building and controlling them reliably.
Speaker 2: And it's so important to reiterate they aren't replacements for
our everyday computers. They're extraordinary, specialized tools designed to complement classical.
Speaker 1: Machines, tackling that unique class of problems previously thought completely impossible,
expanding what computable even means. And it just leaves me
with this really profound question sort of hanging in the air.
If the universe itself really does operate like some vast,
intricate quantum computer, and we humanity are now starting to
build machines that actually mirror its deepest operational processes, what
does that really say about our own understanding of reality?
Speaker 2: It's a deep question.
Speaker 1: Are we just beginning finally to speak the true fundamental
language of existence? And what else might we discover about ourselves,
our place in the cosmos, the fabric of reality? Itself.
When we truly graph this profound connection, it really makes
you wonder about at, well, everything, doesn't it