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QUANTUM LEAP By Evan Anderson
Why Read: We are entering a new era of more-capable quantum computing. In this week's issue, we explore how quantum computing works and the who's who of modern quantum, and examine just how far they may go. ______ Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense. - Roger Penrose I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it. - Erwin Schrdinger
There are likely few areas as confusing and frustrating in modern science as quantum mechanics. The field has flummoxed countless physicists, its cagey switching between states making it difficult to measure. Science, of course, relies heavily on our ability to measure things in a semi-controlled environment, therefore parsing cause and effect, usually (one hopes) after intensive repetition proves to return the same results. Quantum mechanics exists on a strange plane that is nearly in opposition to that. Near the end of his career, Albert Einstein was often criticized for his strong stances on the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. But it is also the case that it was more his frustration with existing theory and its inability to perfectly describe what was happening that gets the most pull quotes, without deeper explanation. In other words, he didn't disbelieve in quantum mechanics itself, but in our existing theories about it. As noted in Scientific American: Einstein, so the standard tale goes, refused to accept that some things are indeterministic - that they just happen, and there is not a darned thing anyone can do to figure out why. [. . .] Einstein accepted that quantum mechanics was indeterministic - as well he might, because he was the one who had discovered its indeterminism. What he did not accept was that this indeterminism was fundamental to nature. It gave every indication of arising from a deeper level of reality that the theory was failing to capture. His critique was not mystical but focused on specific scientific problems that remain unsolved to this day. To an analytical mind, this holds sense. In fact, at the outset of every era of novel scientific discovery, a prior paradigm was replaced. The very definition of that paradigm is that the preexisting body of work presumed that things worked a certain way, when they did not. Consensus was wrong, and the new theories brought forth by each scientific breakthrough subsequently needed refining.
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