You may wonder what this picture and Quantum Computing have in common. Well, bare with me and read on…it might, just might, become clear.
In his life-long quest for truth in the “Knowledge Bowl” of life THE HUSBAND is now fascinated with Quantum anything. Quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum computing, quantum, quantum, quantum. The source of information on this subject is endless and he is determined to mine a lot of it.
As ever he tried to involve me in this search. I know it is his need to share with me and I try, I really try, to be interested, but the pieces of info that stay with me are the whimsical words. In Quantum computing there is the word qubit. This is a combination of quantum and bit. In classical computing a bit is one of the smallest piece of information stored. (The only thing smaller is a nibble. I kid you not, a nibble. Somewhere out there is a computer nerd with enough of a sense of humor to name it a nibble.) The fact I know this, and I’m not sure I really do, is temporary at best. Tomorrow this may be filed away in the “q” section of my brain where I don’t go very often. (I don’t have a lot of “q” information. Maybe I should work on that.)
Qubit alternatively reminds me of cupid; some very fancy cue stick for playing pool; or how to refer to a single person in a queue. All of these are much more fun to muse on than a computer bit. (THE HUSBAND loves to quote to me 8 bits in a byte. What?) So from bit they went to qubit. Were they not clever enough to make up a new word? Like Qubert, (oh, I like that one), or even Hubert or ququamo. (All right, I just went out of control on that last one. In fact when I spell checked this page there was absolutely no suggestion for this word . . . nothing, nada, crickets.) But, I digress, as I often do. (I just read this paragraph and it makes no sense to me.)
This qubit lives in the world of quantum computing which is supposed to take over the world of classical computing. As I understand it, and I’m just hanging on by a thread here, classical computing works on 0’s and 1’s. This is like a light switch, off and on. As these 0’s and 1’s go on and off this produces the information generated by the computer. This is considered by all to be a two way street in a straight line. Therefore if you were to require a particularly complicated piece of computing it might take the classical computer hundred’s of years to complete. (I really don’t think I will ever need anything that takes hundreds of years to complete. Well, maybe all of my craft projects I start but never finish.)
With a quantum computer the “lines” of information are able to travel in any number of ways, much like a tangle of hair. This is referred to as Super positioning. It’s theory is that something is able to be here and there and up and down at the same time. This enables the computer to do many, many, many things at once speeding up the computing time to hours instead of 100’s of years. I’m not kidding, this is what the quantum experts declare.
Now, I probably shouldn’t be the one to comment on this, but doesn’t this sound messy? Just tangles of roads with information traveling all higgeldy piggeldy?
Have you ever heard of Schrodinger’s cat? Schrodinger was a learned physicist who came up with the idea that if you put a live cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that could or could not be set off, and left it there for a long time; right before you went to open the box you really wouldn’t know if the cat was dead or alive. This meant, at that moment in time, it could be both – dead and alive. (Because I watch The Big Bang Theory I actually knew this one before my lesson in quantum computing.) (I personally think you would indeed know if it was alive because it would be screaming it’s head off. Did Schrodinger ever meet a cat? Did he ever own one? They are not completely tamable and will tell you at a moments notice whether they are happy or not. So for that cat to stay in that box without a peep … impossible, Schrodinger, impossible. You nit. Digressing again.
And that brings us to the next amazing fact. There is such a thing as quantum entanglement. They explain this theory thusly: Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon which occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum, blah, blah, blah. Whaaat? The simple explanation they use is if a pair of dice were rolled 100 times on the west coast and a similar pair of dice were rolled 100 times on the east coast at the same time, they would end up with exactly the same combinations on every roll each and every time. And that is quantum entanglement. Good grief. Are you kidding me? I’m changing the meaning of that phrase to refer to when my hair gets particularly wild, beyond human belief and physics. THE HUSBAND is not thrilled by my whimsy.
And then there is the whole alternate universe thing which is really too much for me. There should not, in any way, shape or form be another MAGICAL MESS floating around in another universe. It would just not be magical. No, no, no.
And so I end this quantum rant leaving off much where I began … clueless and not caring.
As a last note, much of the above it not accurately viable. It is information that has gone into my brain, rumbled around, sorted through my parameters and come out as the above. THE HUSBAND informs me I have misrepresented Quantum computing. I don’t care. I like my version. I think my readers will have more fun with my version. What or who does my version harm? It’s not as if physicists are reading the Magical Mess Chronicles. (Maybe they should.)
magicalmess 