Quantum Article Parse Failure of the Pontiffical Kind

Two observations from yesterdays New York Times article about quantum computing (Moving Toward Quantum Computers.)
First, the drawing accompanying the article (here) is interesting to me.  I wonder where they got the idea for it and whether this idea involved Q*bert, color codes, or topological codes?  Or was it just the same old: we have no idea how to draw a quantum computer, so lets just make a cool looking graphic?
Second, I find this sentence fascinating: “D-Wave has built a system with more than 50 quantum bits, but it has been greeted skeptically by many researchers who believe that it has not proved true entanglement.”  Emphasis mine.  Okay I find it fascinating not because of the debate about the quantum nature of D-wave’s machine, but for its language.  If there is “true” entanglement, what is “false” entanglement?    Further for some reason I can’t quite pen down the sentence strikes me as awkward.  In particular it feels like it needs to be something more like “that is has not proved that its system possess real entanglement.” (Yes I understand the sentence, yes I’m not good at reading comprehension, and yes I’m beyond pedantic.)  Am I the only one having a hard time parsing this sentence

2 Replies to “Quantum Article Parse Failure of the Pontiffical Kind”

  1. Hi Dave,
    Perhaps the further awkwardness comes from the phrase ‘not proved’ in addition to ‘true’. It would be nice if you *could* ‘prove’ (or even model) entanglement in a 50+ qubit open quantum system.

  2. Suz G: good point. How much entanglement, exactly, is out there is this big, complex, messy universe? And how do we design experiments to prove or disprove anything about this?

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