Seeing quantum computers work will be like seeing mathemagics at work, doing it all behind the scenes. Physically (for the small ones) it looks the same, but abstractly it can perform all kinds of deep mathematics.
The weird part is not wanting one. The technology has no mundane applications, as far as I know. It’s not like seeing a room-filling supercomputer, or a Silicon Graphics rendering workstation, and imagining what you’d do with all that power, in the distant future of 2010. Nah: quantum computing solves math puzzles. Every program and algorithm sounds like one of those hideous blackboard-filling proofs, where a gleeful teacher tells you to “just” derive by the Pythagorean theorem in frequency-space, and out pops xe + c for some reason.
Thanks to quantum entaglement, quantum computers can search for pathways in the processor simultaneously, making it potentially much better than classical computers. Not only for searching purposes, but also when looking for potential solutions. Seeing that applied to a computer, while keeping in mind that there is something related to quantum mechanics being applied there is fantastic.
I think it would be the first case of applying quantum mechanics directly into the world (no secondary effects, like superconductivity). It would be a computer that actually thinks in quantum, which would broaden our understanding about it much more, when applying it practically.
Seeing quantum computers work will be like seeing mathemagics at work, doing it all behind the scenes. Physically (for the small ones) it looks the same, but abstractly it can perform all kinds of deep mathematics.
The weird part is not wanting one. The technology has no mundane applications, as far as I know. It’s not like seeing a room-filling supercomputer, or a Silicon Graphics rendering workstation, and imagining what you’d do with all that power, in the distant future of 2010. Nah: quantum computing solves math puzzles. Every program and algorithm sounds like one of those hideous blackboard-filling proofs, where a gleeful teacher tells you to “just” derive by the Pythagorean theorem in frequency-space, and out pops xe + c for some reason.
Thanks to quantum entaglement, quantum computers can search for pathways in the processor simultaneously, making it potentially much better than classical computers. Not only for searching purposes, but also when looking for potential solutions. Seeing that applied to a computer, while keeping in mind that there is something related to quantum mechanics being applied there is fantastic.
I think it would be the first case of applying quantum mechanics directly into the world (no secondary effects, like superconductivity). It would be a computer that actually thinks in quantum, which would broaden our understanding about it much more, when applying it practically.