in reply to (OT)another bbc world service news item

I dig the whole quantum computing thing, hence I tend to read about it quite a bit. Fascinating thing, quantum mechanics.

One of the goals/concepts of QC is the fact that quarks (I believe) seem to have the ability to be in more than once place and time at once, the theory being, that if they can use these subatomics for calculations, they can do infinately complicated calculations (*slight* overstatement) nearly instantaneously due to those odd temporal and spatial qualities.

There was an interesting fiction series over at securityfocus.com in which QC factored highly. I believe it was called "Chasing the Wind" or some such. I will hunt for it, its worth the read, even without the QC mention. It's interesting. <g> Optical computing is also one of the goals. Yay! Photons, not electrons! Yay! <grin>

Update: Added a "calculations" so a sentence made sense.
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Re: Re: (OT)another bbc world service news item
by jepri (Parson) on Sep 19, 2002 at 02:47 UTC
    To the best of my knowledge (and this a year old, so I could be way wrong), the thingy doesn't exist in both places at the same time, it just has an option on being in either place, kind of like futures trading.

    It also seems likely that we will start QC with electrons or photons, since it is quite difficult to manipulate quarks (requires a particle accelerator) whereas we are pretty good at manipulating electrons (and photons) with desktop equipment.

    Do dig up that story - it sounds interesting.

    ____________________
    Jeremy
    I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

[reply]
      Here is the link to your story, at least the first part: http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1235
      Search the infocus section for "chasing the wind" and it will pull the rest of the episodes for you. It's an interesting read. :)
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