O brave new quantum world!
Total books read: 40 (see my goodreads profile for a full list) Best book: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut. My review: This book is really going to bork my knowledge of the science history of Haber, Schwarzchild, Grothendieck, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger, but that’s ok. A dark fiction of nonfictions, it …
To work on trying to find novel quantum algorithms is to take a long lonely trip where progress is measured in failures. Whenever one of the brave souls (or group of souls) embarks on such a journey, and comes back with treasure that looks like a new quantum algorithm, we should all do the quantum …
This summer my fourteen year old son’s schedule for the first month off school has been no schedule at all. When I get home each day I ask him whether he has done his job, “are you bored?” I come home to find notebooks with diagrams of fencing strategy, a Google document with detailed instructions …
In my last post I described a list created by the late physicist John Archibald Wheeler describing ways in which the universe could be like a computer. This came from a note in the collection of papers from the American Philosophical Society. In the second part of this note, Wheeler moved on to describing what …
Continue reading “THE UNIVERSE AS A COMPUTER, John Archibald Wheeler, Part 2”
John Archibald Wheeler is a bit of a hero for me (and also, like all good heroes a bit of a villain). Discovering his paper “It from Bit” was definitely a huge inspiration for me to get into the field. When I found Wheeler’s paper it led me to Bill Wootters work, and I immediately …
Continue reading “THE UNIVERSE AS A COMPUTER, John Archibald Wheeler”
NISQ is a term coined by John Preskill circa 2018 and stands for “Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum”. The term is aimed to describe quantum computers that were not just toy few qubit systems, but systems of a slightly larger scale. This “slightly larger” is a bit hard to define, but roughly most people take it as …
“I am a Quantum Engineer, but on Sundays I have principles” — John Bell, as related Nicholas Gisin in quant-ph/0104140 Ahead of his time not just on the implications of quantum theory, but also on the moral of life in the quantum industry.
“We are in a box,” says me. “Do you see some radium hooked up to a crazy steampunk device with skulls and crossbones and yellow, definitely yellow, but maybe also neon green or wavey blue?” says Qubitslets. “No I think we put ourselves in the box,” says me. “I don’t see any radium.” “Maybe we’re …
Is this thing on?
Vox has just published an excellent article on open access scientific publishing, “The open access wars“. While that is too provocative of a title, the article still manages to give an accurate assessment of the current state of play. Although I like the article, I can’t help but nitpick a few points. From the article, …