Written by Marcus Parade on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)
Picture this: You’re a magician on a stage. You place a rabbit in a hat, and suddenly, with a flick of your hand, there’s not 1 rabbit, but 2! Now, imagine if you could do that with your computer – making it not only do one calculation, but millions at the same time. Welcome to the mystical world of quantum computing (QC)! 🐇⚡🐇
The Quantum Mystery:
In our everyday world, things seem pretty straightforward. Your cup of coffee sits on your desk and not floating in the air, right? Things exist in one place at a time, and we’re used to that. But in the quantum reality, things get a bit… wacky. Here, particles can exist in multiple places at the same time!
How is that even possible, you may ask? Well, buckle up, because we’re about to dive together into the crazy world of quantum physics!
🎪 The Deep Atomic Circus – A Magician’s Best Friend:
Quantum mechanics deals with the universe’s tiniest particles: Atoms, electrons, and even quarks. In this microscopic circus, the rules of the game are different from the world we know. Just like how a regular computer uses bits (either a 0 or a 1) to perform calculations, a quantum computer uses quantum bits.
A qubit can be a 0, a 1, or both at the same time! This peculiar principle known as superposition.
Imagine you’re playing a game of hide and seek. In our regular world, you’re either hiding or seeking. But in the quantum world, you could be both hiding and seeking at the same time! That’s superposition for you. It’s as if the quantum particles are the ultimate multi-taskers!
I know it is still confusing – let me give you one more example
🔴 Imagine we have a coin. When you flip it, it can either land heads up or tails up. But while it’s in the air, before you see the result, it can be thought of as being both heads and tails at the same time, because we don’t know the outcome until it lands.
Superposition in quantum physics is somewhat like that, but much more complex. It’s the idea that a particle, like an electron or a photon, can exist in multiple states at once.
For example, an electron in a quantum superposition could be both spinning clockwise and counter clockwise at the same time, or a photon could be in multiple places at once.
💡 Some QC already today claim to be a trillion times faster than a standard supercomputer of today. This means in turn a QC can do calculations in less than 1 minute for which our supercomputer needs 10,000 years to finish it.
Quantum Entanglement: The Ultimate Magic Trick
Another trick up the QC’s magic sleeve is a phenomenon called entanglement. If two quantum particles become entangled, they become like a pair of magical twins. Change the state of one, and the other changes automatically, no matter how far apart they are!
Imagine if you had a pair of entangled dice. You roll one in New York and the other in London. No matter what, they always show the same number. That’s quantum entanglement, and it’s one of the key ingredients in the QC “soup”. 🍜
🌤🌻 Our Quantum Leap into our Future:
QC is still in its early stages, but the possibilities are and will be simply amazing.
When the software of artificial intelligence and the hardware of quantum computers become best friends eventually, one scientist said: “Watch out!”. While this can be interpreted in at least two ways, let’s be curious and investigate the positive aspects, while at the same time watching out.
🐇 🎩 🐇 So, the next time you see a magician pull 1 rabbit out of a hat and then 2, remember that in the world of QC, doing many amazing things at once is just the new normal. Welcome to the future of computers, where everything seems like magic with endless possibilities!
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Love, Marcus
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