quantum
pontiff | January 24, 2008Michael sends me a link to an article with the name of the new James Bond movie: Quantum of Solace. If compassion is quantized (down that path leads madness), I really hope I'm in a region where the correspondence principle applies.
pontiff | January 23, 2008Fortune has put out its list of the top 100 companies to work for. The Google Monster is number one. Washington state does pretty good, as it is in a tie for fourth in the total number of companies on the list with headquarters in the state. (Per capita it comes in third, losing to Delaware and D.C.)
Looking through their article on "10 fascinating Googlers" I found Wei-Hwa Huang. Hey, he was in my class at Caltech! Indeed Wei-Hwa was responsible for one of my favorite stories about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Huh?
Wei-Hwa, you see, is a world class puzzle…
pontiff | January 17, 2008Through my computer science "information is king" eyeglasses, there are really only two notions which thoroughly distinguish quantum theory from classical theories of how the world works: the nonlocal nature of quantum correlations as exemplified by Bell's theorem and the much less well known contextual nature of quantum measurements as exemplified by the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem. While the former is well known (and hence, to paraphrase Gell-Mann, what you've heard about it is mostly wrong), the later is less well known. Is that because it is a complicated idea? I don't think so!…
pontiff | January 16, 2008Sam, after asking me for $100 dollars out of nowhere, points me to quantalk.org, a new slick website for, err, talking about quantum information. Seems to be a closed registration right now, so no talking by plebes is allowed, but it is slick! I hope it goes far, considering how little success I've had in my own endeavors into Science 2.0.
Interestingly, and spurring Sam's comment, right now it says they are offering one hundred euro for reviews right now (Update: Simon Benjamin, one of the operators, points that you need to make sure and email them before embarking on such an adventure…
pontiff | January 16, 2008Graphene quantum dots as qubits, Quantum Zeno effect, and the APS March meeting.
A group in Zurich has made quantum dots in graphene and demonstrated Coulomb blockade opening up yet another material of promise for quantum dot qubits. Journal article here.
Lev Vaidman has an itneresting News and Views on some recent work related to the quantum Zeno effect and in particular on this recent Physical Review A article.
The March meeting of the APS now has its program online. The best way I can figure out of finding sessions sponsered by GQI is going to this page and searching the text of that…
pontiff | December 26, 2007What do you call a quantum computer built in the shape of a cubic lattice and containing 450000 qubits?
Noah's ark, of course! Genesis 6:14. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
pontiff | December 24, 2007Merry Christmas! I don't think this explanation for Santa delivering presents using quantum theory works. But it does bring up the question of whether Santa could get a quadratric speedup using quantum gift delivery?
pontiff | December 14, 2007Murray Gell-Mann always makes me laugh. Via Asymptotia here is what Murray said while giving a Ted talk:
I won't go into a lot of stuff about quantum mechanics and what it's like and so on...you've heard a lot of wrong things about it anyway!
Which got me wondering: is more said which is wrong about quantum theory than any other theory in physics? Now certainly there are those who will interpret Einstein's relativity (which one they probably won't tell you) as some postmodern "everything is relative" mantra. But (and maybe because I'm locked in a quantum closet all day) it seems to me that…
pontiff | December 4, 2007SQuInT program and deadline, Rush Limbaugh on quantum cosmology, and the parallel worlds of Hugh Everett's son
The 2008 SQuInT conference deadline for registration is fast approaching, December 12. The program is now available online as well. Looks like a good lineup.
Rush Limbaugh talks about quantum cosmology. He is completely wrong that man doesn't affect his environment, less wrong that we are insignificant in the universe, and you can imagine that since the paper he is talking about has been filtered through at least one other media organization prior to reaching his hands, the…
pontiff | November 21, 2007Postdocs, APS GQI quantum newsletter, Quantum computing in Waikiki, quantum chicanery, quantum foods.
Postdocs at NIST: National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateships at Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division of the NIST Information Technology Laboratory
The fall newsletter for the APS Topical Group of Quantum Information, Concepts and Computation is available. Included is a report on a recent quantum computing conference in Iran, as well as statements from the people crazy enough to run the topical group officer positions. Wait, I'm one of those crazies? Doh.…
pontiff | November 20, 2007So you want to learn quantum theory in ten minutes? Well I certainly can't give you the full theory in all its wonder and all its gory detail in that time, but I can give you a light version of the quantum theory in about that time. And won't that impress your friends!
To learn quantum theory you first need to learn classical theory. (Walk slowly little grasshopper.) What classical theory should we talk about: mechanics or general relativity or maybe electromagnetism? None of those! Those are crazy overwhelming and intimidating classical theories. Instead we can take a classical theory…