Quantum computer that 'computes without running' sets efficiency record

PhysOrg ^ | 8/31/15 | Lisa Zyga

[LibWhacker]

Next... Force a quantum computer that hasn't been built yet to compute. Then you'll have something! j/k

[Crazieman]

But will it run Doom 3?

(Old Slashdot joke)

[GeronL]

interesting but its over my head.. lol

[LibWhacker]

Mine too. That’s why I’m reduced to cracking jokes about it!

[dorothy]

Speaking of jokes:

Schrodinger's cat

[Viking2002]

".......the result of a computation may be learned without actually running the computer."

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

When they have a cardboard box with a unattached screen that can turn on by itself and play SplinterCell Double Agent, THEN I’ll be impressed.

[Vision Thing]

[Employing the counterfactual quantum phenomenon, several groups have proposed and demonstrated a new model of secret communication in which no physical signal particles are transmitted, which provides practical security advantages.]

A new challenge for the nsa, cia, dia, and fbi.

[Sir Gawain]

From what I’ve read they don’t even really know how it works. It sends information into the quantum realm (or another dimension) and then the answer comes back like magic. Makes you wonder just who or what is supplying the answer.

[lentulusgracchus]

[Article]The researchers, led by Prof. Jiangfeng Du at the University of Science and Technology of China and Prof. Liang Jiang at Yale University in the US, have published a paper on the high-efficiency counterfactual computing method in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

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God damn it.

Where are our guys?

This is top-drawer theoretical physics. Do you know what this means for 15 years down the road?

How about military technologies we can only dream of, illuminating U.S. submarines and aircraft and decrypting our best cryptosystems in a flash?

What is this collaboration with Yale -- a thinktank pipeline sucking our best people dry and channeling their insights to Chinese skunk works?

I really didn't need to read something like this, not when we've got America's biggest enemy in the White Hut.

The British may have to bail us out on this growing -- not technology, but hierarchically higher theoretical knowledge -- disparity, which threatens us like no money-slurping low-level spy ever did.

This is top-level espionage, conducted out in the open "in the name of science".

[lentulusgracchus]

interesting but its over my head.. lol

I'll make it easy. The Chinese are swarming our top universities and technology companies, sucking our brains and passing the take back to China, where 40,000,000 Chinese coolies are busy digging our graves.

[Swordmaker]

MAGIC

[davius]

Potentiated photonic cryptography via axial polarization! Brilliant! Thanks for posting this.

[Norm Lenhart]

I must confess, it is rather quaint to observe the people of your world being fascinated by such basic discoveries...

[The Cajun]

From what I’ve read they don’t even really know how it works. It sends information into the quantum realm (or another dimension) and then the answer comes back like magic. Makes you wonder just who or what is supplying the answer.

What's the old Sci/Fi movie line: ”Some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know”, ..............Just saying :^)

[aquila48]

"How counterfactual computing works By "not running," the scientists mean that the computer—which can operate in either an "on" subspace or an "off" subspace—stays in its "off" subspace for the entire computation. Physically maintaining the computer in the "off" subspace, in this scheme, involves controlling the spin properties of a diamond system, which acts as a quantum switch. Some of the spins must be kept in a superposition state, in which they occupy two states at the same time. To control the spin superposition, the physicists took advantage of the quantum Zeno effect, in which frequent measurements on a system can "freeze" the system in its current state. By applying a sequence of pulses to the system, the scientists could keep the system in its "off" subspace, and so keep it from running." Ahh, now I get it!

[dr_lew]

The concept, as far as I understand it, is essentially a quantum analog computer. A classical analog computer emulated differential equations with voltages and currents. In the quantum analog computer, different sorts of analogies are made, but it still relies on physical laws, in this case quantum laws, to determine the final state, and the output of the computation. Personally, I think the whole thing is a crock. They’ve been touting this idea for decades, and whatever success they may eventually proclaim, it won’t amount to a hill of beans.

[aquila48]

“The researchers, led by Prof. Jiangfeng Du at the University of Science and Technology of China and Prof. Liang Jiang at Yale University”

So the leading researchers are a chinese in China and a chinese in the US.

If anybody should be upset it should be the chinese for making this cutting edge technology public.

But I guess they figure that whatever comes out of it, they’ll be building it and exporting it to us.

[sten]

i’ve been screaming about the impact of H-1bs on the sciences for years.

i’m glad i’m not the only one that noticed it in this brief.

[Sir Gawain]

I have a feeling that whatever is made public is about 10 to 20 years behind what tech the black sites currently have.