Over the past few years, the capabilities of quantum computers have reached the stage where they can be used to pursue research with widespread technological impact. Through their research, the Q4Q team at the University of Southern California, University of North Texas, and Central Michigan University, explores how software and algorithms designed for the latest quantum computing technologies can be adapted to suit the needs of applied sciences. In a collaborative project, the Q4Q team sets out a roadmap for bringing accessible, user-friendly quantum computing into fields ranging from materials science, to pharmaceutical drug development.

Since it first emerged in the 1980s, the field of quantum computing has promised to transform the ways in which we process information. The technology is centered on the fact that quantum particles such as electrons exist in superpositions of states. Quantum mechanics also dictates that particles will only collapse into one single measurable state when observed by a user. By harnessing these unique properties, physicists discovered that batches of quantum particles can act as more advanced counterparts to conventional binary bits which only exist in one of two possible states (on or off) at a given time.

On classical computers, we write and process information in a binary form. Namely, the basic unit of information is a bit, which takes on the logical binary values 0 or 1. Similarly, quantum bits (also known as qubits) are the native information carriers on quantum computers. Much like bits, we read binary outcomes of qubits, that is 0 or 1 for each qubit.

However, in a stark contrast to bits, we can encode information on a qubit in the form of a superposition of logical values of 0 and 1. This means that we can encode much more information in a qubit than in a bit. In addition, when we have a collection of qubits, the principle of superposition leads to computational states that can encode correlations among the qubits, which are stronger than any type of correlations achieved within a collection of bits. Superposition and strong quantum correlations are, arguably, the foundations on which quantum computers rely on to provide faster processing speeds than their classical counterparts.

To realize computations, qubit states can be used in quantum logic gates, which perform operations on qubits, thus transforming the input state according to a programmed algorithm. This is a paradigm for quantum computation, analogous to conventional computers. In 1998, both qubits and quantum logic gates were realized experimentally for the first time bringing the previously-theoretical concept of quantum computing into the real world.

From this basis, researchers then began to develop new software and algorithms, specially designed for operations using qubits. At the time, however, the widespread adoption of these techniques in everyday applications still seemed a long way off. The heart of the issue lay in the errors that are inevitably introduced to quantum systems by their surrounding environments. If uncorrected, these errors can cause qubits to lose their quantum information, rendering computations completely useless. Many studies at the time aimed to develop ways to correct these errors, but the processes they came up with were invariably costly and time-consuming.

Unfortunately, the risk of introducing errors to quantum computations increases drastically as more qubits are added to a system. For over a decade after the initial experimental realization of qubits and quantum logic gates, this meant that quantum computers showed little promise in rivalling the capabilities of their conventional counterparts.

In addition, quantum computing was largely limited to specialized research labs, meaning that many research groups that could have benefited from the technology were unable to access it.

While error correction remains a hurdle, the technology has since moved beyond specialized research labs, becoming accessible to more users. This occurred for the first time in 2011, when the first quantum annealer was commercialized. With this event, feasible routes emerged towards reliable quantum processors containing thousands of qubits capable of useful computations.

Quantum annealing is an advanced technique for obtaining optimal solutions to complex mathematical problems. It is a quantum computation paradigm alternative to operating on qubits with quantum logic gates.

The availability of commercial quantum annealers spurned a new surge in interest for quantum computing, with consequent technological progress, especially fueled by industrial capitals. In 2016, this culminated in the development of a new cloud system based on quantum logic gates, which enabled owners and users of quantum computers around the world to pool their resources together, expanding the use of the devices outside of specialized research labs. Before long, the widespread use of quantum software and algorithms for specific research scenarios began to look increasingly realistic.

At the time, however, the technology still required high levels of expertise to operate. Without specific knowledge of the quantum processes involved, researchers in fields such as biology, chemistry, materials science, and drug development could not make full use of them. Further progress would be needed before the advantages of quantum computing could be widely applied outside the field of quantum mechanics itself.

Now, the Q4Q team aims to build on these previous advances using user-friendly quantum algorithms and software packages to realize quantum simulations of physical systems. Where the deeply complex properties of these systems are incredibly difficult to recreate within conventional computers, there is now hope that this could be achieved using large systems of qubits.

To recreate the technologies that could realistically become widely available in the near future, the teams experiments will incorporate noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices which contain relatively large numbers of qubits, and by themselves are prone to environmental errors.

In their projects, the Q4Q team identifies three particular aspects of molecules and solid materials that could be better explored through the techniques they aim to develop. The first of these concerns the band structures of solids which describe the range of energy levels that electrons can occupy within a solid, as well as the energies they are forbidden from possessing.

Secondly, they aim to describe the vibrations and electronic properties of individual molecules each of which can heavily influence their physical properties. Finally, the researchers will explore how certain aspects of quantum annealing can be exploited to realize machine-learning algorithms which automatically improve through their experience of processing data.

As they apply these techniques, the Q4Q team predicts that their findings will lead to a better knowledge of the quantum properties of both molecules and solid materials. In particular, they hope to provide better descriptions of periodic solids, whose constituent atoms are arranged in reliably repeating patterns.

Previously, researchers struggled to reproduce the wavefunctions of interacting quantum particles within these materials, which relate to the probability of finding the particles in particular positions when observed by a user. Through their techniques, the Q4Q team aims to reduce the number of qubits required to capture these wavefunctions, leading to more realistic quantum simulations of the solid materials.

Elsewhere, the Q4Q team will account for the often deeply complex quantum properties of individual molecules made up of large groups of atoms. During chemical reactions, any changes taking place within these molecules will be strongly driven by quantum processes, which are still poorly understood. By developing plugins to existing quantum software, the team hopes to accurately recreate this quantum chemistry in simulated reactions.

If they are successful in reaching these goals, the results of their work could open up many new avenues of research within a diverse array of fields especially where the effects of quantum mechanics have not yet been widely considered. In particular, they will also contribute to identifying bottlenecks of current quantum processing units, which will aid the design of better quantum computers.

Perhaps most generally, the Q4Q team hopes that their techniques will enable researchers to better understand how matter responds to external perturbations, such as lasers and other light sources.

Elsewhere, widely accessible quantum software could become immensely useful in the design of new pharmaceutical drugs, as well as new fertilizers. By ascertaining how reactions between organic and biological molecules unfold within simulations, researchers could engineer molecular structures that are specifically tailored to treating certain medical conditions.

The ability to simulate these reactions could also lead to new advances in the field of biology as a whole, where processes involving large, deeply complex molecules including proteins and nucleic acids are critical to the function of every living organism.

Finally, a better knowledge of the vibrational and electronic properties of periodic solids could transform the field of materials physics. By precisely engineering structures to display certain physical properties on macroscopic scales, researchers could tailor new materials with a vast array of desirable characteristics: including durability, advanced interaction with light, and environmental sustainability.

If the impacts of the teams proposed research goals are as transformative as they hope, researchers in many different fields of the technological endeavor could soon be working with quantum technologies.

Such a clear shift away from traditional research practices could in turn create many new jobs with required skillsets including the use of cutting-edge quantum software and algorithms. Therefore, a key element of the teams activity is to develop new strategies for training future generations of researchers. Members of the Q4Q team believe that this will present some of the clearest routes yet towards the widespread application of quantum computing in our everyday lives.

This article was authored by the Q4Q team, consisting of lead investigator Rosa Di Felice, Anna Krylov, Marco Fornari, Marco Buongiorno Nardelli, Itay Hen and Amir Kalev, in Scientia. Learn more about the team, and find the original article here.

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The future of scientific research is quantum - The Next Web

In perhaps his most famous quip of all time, celebrated physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, when speaking about new discoveries, The first principle is that you must not fool yourselfand you are the easiest person to fool. When you do science yourself, engaging in the process of research and inquiry, there are many ways you can become your own worst enemy. If youre the one proposing a new idea, you must avoid falling into the trap of becoming enamored with it; if you do, you run the risk of choosing to emphasize only the results that support it, while discounting the evidence that contradicts or refutes it.

Similarly, if youre an experimenter or observer whos become enamored with a particular explanation or interpretation of the data, you have to fight against your own biases concerning what you expect (or, worse, hope) the outcome of your labors will indicate. As the more familiar refrain goes, If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Its part of why we demand, as part of the scientific process, independent, robust confirmation of every result, as well as the scrutiny of our scientific peers to ensure were all doing our research properly and interpreting our results correctly.

Recently, former NASA engineer Harold Sonny White, famous (or infamous) for his previous dubious claims about physics-violating engines, has made a big splash, claiming to have created a real-life warp bubble: an essential step toward creating an actual warp drive, as made famous by Star Trek. But is this claim correct? Lets take a look.

Warp drive started off as a speculative idea. Rather than being bound by the limits of special relativity where massive objects can only approach, but can never reach or exceed, the speed of light warp drive recognized the novel possibility brought about by general relativity: where the fabric of space is curved. In special relativity, we treat space as being indistinguishable from flat, which is an excellent approximation almost everywhere in the Universe. Only near extremely dense and massive objects do the effects of curved space typically become important. But if you can manipulate the matter and energy in the Universe properly, its possible to cause space to curve in intricate, counterintuitive ways.

Just as you could take a flat sheet of paper and fold it, it should be possible, with enough matter and energy in the right configuration, to warp the fabric of space between any two points. If you warp space properly, the reasoning goes, you could potentially shorten the amount of space you need to traverse between any two points; all youd need is the right amount of energy configured in the right way. For a long time, the theoretical solutions that shortened the journey from one point to another were limited to ideas like wormholes, Einstein-Rosen bridges, and black holes that connected to white holes at the other end. In all of these cases, however, there was an immediate problem: Any spacecraft traveling through these mechanisms would violently be torn apart by the irresistible gravitational forces.

But all of this changed in 1994, when physicist Miguel Alcubierre put forth a paper that showed how warp drive could be physically possible. Alcubierre recognized that the presence of matter and/or energy always led to positive spatial curvature, like the heavily curved space just outside a black holes event horizon. However, negative spatial curvature would also be possible if, instead of matter and/or energy, we had some sort of negative-mass matter or negative energy. By playing around with these two ingredients, instead of just the usual one, Alcubierre stumbled upon an idea that was truly brilliant.

By manipulating large amounts of both positive and negative energy, Alcubierre showed how, without wormholes, a spaceship could travel through the fabric of space at an arbitrarily large speed: unbounded by the speed of light. The way this would work is that both types of energy positive and negative would be present in equal quantities, compressing the space in front of the spacecraft while simultaneously rarifying the space behind it by an equal amount. Meanwhile, the spacecraft itself would be encased in a warp bubble where space was indistinguishable from flat on the interior. This way, as the spacecraft and the bubble moved together, they would travel through the compressed space, shortening the journey.

One way to envision this is to imagine we wanted to travel to the TRAPPIST-1 system: a stellar system with a red dwarf star, containing at least seven Earth-sized planets in orbit around it. While the innermost planets are likely to be too hot, akin to Mercury, and the outermost planets are likely frozen over like Pluto, Triton, or Enceladus, some of the intermediate planets might yet be just right for habitability, and may possibly even be inhabited. The TRAPPIST-1 system is approximately 40 light-years away.

Without warp drive, youd be limited by special relativity, which describes your motion through the fabric of space. If you traveled quickly enough, at, say, 99.992% the speed of light, you could make the journey to TRAPPIST-1 in just six months, from your perspective. If you looked around, assessed the planet, and then turned around and came home at precisely the same speed, 99.992% the speed of light, it would take you another six months to return. Those individuals aboard the spacecraft would experience only one year of times passage, but back here at home, everyone else would have experienced the passage of 81 years.

When youre limited by the speed of light, this problem cannot be avoided: Even if you could travel arbitrarily close to the speed of light, slowing your own aging through time dilation and shortening your journey through length contraction, everyone back home continues to age at the normal rate. When everyone meets up again, the effects are dramatic.

With warp drive, however, this problem goes away almost entirely. The way that relativity works dictates that your passage through space and time are related: that the faster you move through space, the slower time passes for you, while remaining completely stationary in space causes time to pass at the maximum possible rate. By warping space itself, you can actually change it so that what was previously a 40-light-year journey in front of you might now appear as though it were only a 0.5-light-year journey. If you travel that distance, now, at 80% the speed of light, it still might take about six months to get to TRAPPIST-1. When you stop, turn around, and come back, with space warped again in your forward direction of motion, it again will take six months. All told, youll have aged one year on your journey.

But this time, because of how you undertook your journey, someone back on Earth would still be older, but not by very much. Instead of witnessing you traveling through space at nearly the speed of light, a terrestrial observer would witness the space in front of your spacecraft be continually shrunk, while the space behind you would continually be expanded. Youd be moving through space, but the warping of space itself would far and away be the dominant effect. Everyone back at home would have aged about 1 year and 8 months, but (almost) everyone you knew and loved would still be alive. If we want to undertake interstellar journeys and not say a permanent goodbye to everyone at home, warp drive is the way to do it.

In 2017, I authored the book Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive, where I presented nearly 30 different technological advances envisioned by the Star Trek franchise. For each technology, I evaluated which ones had already been brought to fruition, which ones were on their way, which ones were still a ways off but were physically possible, and which one would require something novel and presently speculative as far as science was concerned in order to become possible. Although there were only four such technologies that were currently impossible with our present understanding of physics, warp drive was one of them, as it required some type of negative mass or negative energy, which at present is purely speculative.

Today, however, its recognized that whats needed isnt necessarily negative mass or negative energy; that was simply the way that Alcubierre recognized one could induce the needed opposite type of curvature to space from what normal mass or energy causes. However, theres another possibility for this that stems from a realization that didnt yet exist back in 1994, when Alcubierre first put his work forth: that the default amount of energy in space isnt zero, but some positive, non-zero, finite value. It wasnt until 1998 that the effects of this energy were first robustly seen, manifesting itself in the accelerated expansion of the Universe. We know this today as dark energy, and its a form of energy intrinsic to the fabric of space itself.

Now, keep that in mind: Theres a finite amount of energy to the fabric of space itself. In addition to that, theres a famous calculation that was done back in the 1940s, in the early days of quantum field theory, by Hendrik Casimir, that has remarkable implications. Normally, the quantum fields that govern the Universe, including the electromagnetic field, exist everywhere in space; theyre intrinsic to it, and they cannot be removed. But if you set up certain boundary conditions Casimir first envisioned two parallel, conducting plates as an example certain modes of that field would be excluded; they had the wrong wavelength to fit between the plates.

As a result, the energy inherent to the space outside of the plates would be slightly greater than the energy inside the plates, causing them to attract. The effect wasnt experimentally confirmed until almost 50 years after it was proposed, when Steve Lamoreaux successfully did it, and the Casimir effect has now been calculated and measured for many systems and many configurations. It may be possible, with the proper configuration, to use the Casimir effect in a controlled fashion to substitute for Alcubierres original idea of exotic matter that possessed some type of negative energy.

However, one must be careful as stated earlier, its easy to fool yourself. The Casimir effect isnt equivalent to a warp bubble. But in principle, it could be used to warp space in the negative fashion that would be needed to create one.

The article, thankfully, published in the open access (but often dubious) European Physical Journal C, is publicly available to anyone wishing to download it. (Link here.) Using micron-scale electrical conductors in a variety of shapes, including pillars, plates, spheres and other cavities, teams of researchers were able to generate electric potentials (or changes in voltage) of a few hundred microvolts, completely in line with what previous experiments and theoretical predictions both indicate. Thats what the DARPA-funded project was for, and thats what the experimental research surrounding this idea accomplished: in a custom Casimir cavity.

However, theres an enormous difference between what teams working on Casimir cavities do experimentally and the numerical calculations performed in this paper. Thats right: This isnt an experimental paper, but rather a theoretical paper, one with a suspiciously low number (zero) of theoretical physicists on it. The paper relies on the dynamic vacuum model a model typically applicable to single atoms to model the energy density throughout space that would be generated by this cavity. They then use another technique, worldline numerics, to assess how the vacuum changes in response to the custom Casimir cavity.

And then it gets shady. Wheres my warp bubble? They didnt make one. In fact, they didnt calculate one, either. All they did was show that the three-dimensional energy density generated by this cavity displayed some qualitative correlations with the energy density field required by the Alcubierre drive. They dont match in a quantitative sense; they were not generated experimentally, but only calculated numerically; and most importantly, they are restricted to microscopic scales and extremely low energy densities. Theres a lot of speculation and conjecture, and all of it is unproven.

That isnt to say this might not be an interesting idea that might someday pan out. But the most generous thing I can say about it is this: it isnt fully baked. The most worrisome part, as a scientist familiar with Dr. Whites grandiose claims surrounding physics-violating engines in the past, is that hes making new grand claims without adequate supporting evidence. Hes going to be looking at tiny, low-power systems and attempting to make measurements right at the limit of what his equipment will be able to detect. And, in the very recent past, he has fooled himself (and many others) into believing a novel effect was present when, in fact, it was not. An error, where his team failed to account for the magnetic and electric fields generated by the wires powering his previous apparatus, was all he wound up measuring.

In science, the mindset made famous by The X-Files series, I want to believe, is frequently the most dangerous one we can have. Science is not about what you hope is true; its not about the way youd like reality to be; its not about what your gut tells you; and its not about the patterns you can almost see when you ignore the quantitative details. At its core, science is about what is true in our reality, and what can be experimentally and/or observationally verified. Its predictions are reliable when youre using established theories within their established range of validity, and speculative the instant you venture beyond that.

As much as Id love it if we had created a warp bubble in the lab, that simply isnt what happened here. A lack of appropriately healthy skepticism is how we wind up with scams and charlatans. As soon as you no longer bear the responsibility of rigorously testing and attempting to knock down your own hypotheses, youre committing the cardinal sin of any scientific investigation: engaging in motivated reasoning, rather that letting nature guide you to your conclusions. Warp drive remains an interesting possibility and one worthy of continued scientific investigation, but one that you should remain tremendously skeptical about given the current state of affairs.

Remember: The more you want something to be true, the more skeptical you need to be of it. Otherwise, you are already violating the first principle about not fooling yourself. When you want to believe, you already are the easiest person to fool.

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I wrote the book on warp drive. No, we didn't accidentally create a warp bubble. - Big Think

If you ask the average person to name one scientist from any time or place in history, one of the most common names youre likely to hear is Albert Einstein. The iconic physicist was responsible for a remarkable number of scientific advances during the 20th century, and perhaps single-handedly overthrew the Newtonian physics that had dominated scientific thought for more than 200 years. His most famous equation, E = mc, is so prolific that even people who dont know what it means can recite it. He won the Nobel Prize for advances in quantum physics. And his most successful idea the general theory of relativity, our theory of gravity remains undefeated in all tests more than 100 years after Einstein first proposed it.

But what if Einstein had never existed? Would others have come along and made precisely the same advances? Would those advances have come quickly, or would they have taken such a long time that some of them might not yet have occurred? Would it have taken a genius of equal magnitude to bring his great achievements to fruition? Or do we severely overestimate just how rare and unique Einstein was, elevating him to an undeserved position in our minds based on the fact that he was simply in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills? Its a fascinating question to explore. Lets dive in.

Einstein had whats known as his miracle year in 1905, when he published a series of papers that would go on to revolutionize a number of areas in physics. But just prior to that, a great number of advances had recently occurred that threw many long-held assumptions about the Universe into great doubt. For over 200 years, Isaac Newton had stood unchallenged in the realm of mechanics: both in the terrestrial and celestial realms. His law of universal gravitation applied just as well to objects in the Solar System as it did to balls rolling down a hill, or cannonballs fired from a cannon.

In the eyes of a Newtonian physicist, the Universe was deterministic. If you could write down the positions, momenta, and masses of every object in the Universe, you could calculate how each of them would evolve to arbitrary precisions at any moment in time. Additionally, space and time were absolute entities, and the gravitational force traveled at infinite speeds, with instantaneous effects. Throughout the 1800s, the science of electromagnetism was developed as well, uncovering intricate relationships between electric charges, currents, electric and magnetic fields, and even light itself. In many ways, it seemed that physics was almost solved, given the successes of Newton, Maxwell, and others.

Until, that is, it wasnt. There were puzzles that seemed to hint at something new in many different directions. The first discoveries of radioactivity had already taken place, and it was realized that mass was actually lost when certain atoms decayed. The momenta of the decaying particles didnt appear to match the momenta of the parent particles, indicating that either something wasnt conserved or that something unseen was present. Atoms were determined not to be fundamental, but made of positively charged atomic nuclei and discrete, negatively charged electrons.

But there were two challenges to Newton that seemed, somehow, more important than all of the others.

The first confusing observation was the orbit of Mercury. Whereas all of the other planets obeyed Newtons laws to the limits of our precision in measuring them, Mercury did not. Despite accounting for the precession of the equinoxes and the effects of the other planets, Mercurys orbits failed to match predictions by a minuscule but significant amount. The extra 43 arc-seconds-per-century of precession led many to hypothesize the existence of Vulcan, a planet inner to Mercury, but none was there to be discovered.

The second was perhaps even more puzzling: When objects moved close to the speed of light, they no longer obeyed Newtons equations of motion. If you were on a train at 100 miles per hour and threw a baseball at 100 miles per hour in the forward direction, the ball would move at 200 miles per hour. Intuitively, this is what youd expect to occur, and also what does occur when you perform the experiment for yourself.

But if youre on a moving train and you shine a beam of light forward, backward, or any other direction, it always moves at the speed of light, regardless of how the train is moving. In fact, its also true regardless of how quickly the observer watching the light is moving.

Moreover, if youre on a moving train and you throw a ball, but the train and ball are both traveling close to the speed of light, addition doesnt work the way were used to. If the train moves at 60% the speed of light and you throw the ball forward at 60% the speed of light, it doesnt move at 120% the speed of light, but only at ~88% the speed of light. Although we were able to describe whats happening, we couldnt explain it. And thats where Einstein came onto the scene.

Although its difficult to condense the entirety of his achievements into even a single article, perhaps his most momentous discoveries and advances are as follows.

The equation E = mc: When atoms decay, they lose mass. Where does that mass go if its not conserved? Einstein had the answer: It gets converted into energy. Moreover, Einstein had the correct answer: It gets converted, specifically, into the amount of energy described by his famous equation, E = mc. It works the other way as well; weve since created masses in the form of matter-antimatter pairs from pure energy based on this equation. In every circumstance its ever been tested under, E = mc is a success.

Special Relativity: When objects move close to the speed of light, how do they behave? They move in a variety of counterintuitive ways, but all are described by the theory of special relativity. There is a speed limit to the Universe: the speed of light in a vacuum, at which all massless entities in a vacuum move precisely. If you have mass, you can never reach, but only approach that speed. The laws of special relativity dictate how objects moving near the speed of light accelerate, add or subtract in velocity, and how time dilates and lengths contract for them.

The photoelectric effect: When you shine direct sunlight on a piece of conducting metal, it can kick the most loosely held electrons off of it. If you increase the lights intensity, more electrons get kicked off, while if you decrease the lights intensity, fewer electrons get kicked off. But heres where it gets weird: Einstein discovered that it wasnt based on the lights total intensity, but on the intensity of light above a certain energy threshold. Ultraviolet light only would cause the ionization, not visible or infrared, regardless of the intensity. Einstein showed that lights energy was quantized into individual photons, and that the number of ionizing photons determined how many electrons got kicked off; nothing else would do it.

General relativity: This was the biggest, most hard-fought revolution of all: a new theory of gravity governing the Universe. Space and time were not absolute, but made a fabric through which all objects, including all forms of matter and energy, traveled. Spacetime would curve and evolve owing to the presence and distribution of matter and energy, and that curved spacetime told matter and energy how to move. When put to the test, Einsteins relativity succeeded where Newton failed, explaining Mercurys orbit and predicting how starlight would deflect during a solar eclipse. Since it was first proposed, General Relativity has never been experimentally or observationally contradicted.

In addition to this, there were many other advances that Einstein himself played a major role in initiating. He discovered Brownian motion; he co-discovered the statistical rules under which boson particles operated; he contributed substantially to the foundations of quantum mechanics through the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox; and he arguably invented the idea of wormholes through the Einstein-Rosen bridge. His scientific career of contributions was truly legendary.

And yet, there are many reasons to believe that despite the unparalleled career that Einstein had, the full suite of advances that were made by Einstein would have been made by others in very short order without him. Its impossible to know for certain, but for all that we laud the genius of Einstein and hold him up as a singular example of how one incredible mind can change our conception of the Universe as he, in fact, actually did pretty much everything that occurred on account of Einstein would have occurred without him.

Prior to Einstein, back in the 1880s, physicist J.J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron, began thinking that the electric and magnetic fields of a moving, charged particle must carry energy with them. He attempted to quantify the amount of that energy. It was complicated, but a simplified set of assumptions allowed Oliver Heaviside to make a calculation: He determined the amount of effective mass that a charged particle carried was proportional to the electric field energy (E) divided by the speed of light (c) squared. Heaviside had a proportionality constant in there of 4/3 that was different from the true value of 1 in his 1889 calculation, as would Fritz Hasenhrl in 1904 and 1905. Henri Poincar independently derived E = mc in 1900, but didnt understand the implications of his derivations.

Without Einstein, we were already perilously close to his most famous equation; it seems unrealistic to expect we wouldnt have gotten the rest of the way there in short order had he not come along.

Similarly, we were already extremely close to special relativity. The Michelson-Morley experiment had demonstrated that light always moved at a constant speed, and it had disproven the most popular aether models. Hendrik Lorentz had already uncovered the transformation equations that determined how velocities added and how time dilated, and independently along with George FitzGerald, determined how lengths contracted in the direction of motion. In many ways, these were the building blocks that led Einstein to develop the theory of special relativity. However, it was Einstein who put it together. Again, its difficult to imagine that Lorentz, Poincar, and others working at the interface of electromagnetism and the speed of light wouldnt have taken similar leaps to arrive at this profound conclusion. Even without Einstein, we were already so close.

Max Plancks work with light set the stage for the discovery of the photoelectric effect; it surely would have occurred with or without Einstein.

Fermi and Dirac worked out the statistics for fermions (the other type of particle, besides bosons), while it was Satyendra Bose who worked them out for the particles that bear his name; Einstein was merely the recipient of Boses correspondence.

Quantum mechanics, arguably, would have developed just as well in the absence of Einstein.

But general relativity is the big one. With special relativity already under his belt, Einstein set about to fold in gravity. While Einsteins equivalence principle the realization that gravitation caused an acceleration, and that all accelerations were indistinguishable to the observer is what led him there, with Einstein himself calling it his happiest thought that left him unable to sleep for three days, others were thinking along the same lines.

Of all the advances that Einstein made, this was the one that his peers were farthest behind when he put it forth. Still, while it might have taken many years or even decades, the fact that others were already so close to thinking precisely along the same lines as Einstein leads us to believe that even if Einstein had never existed, general relativity would eventually have fallen into the realm of human knowledge.

We typically have a narrative in how science advances: that one individual, through a sheer stroke of genius, spots the key advance or way of thinking that everyone else had missed. Without that one individual, humanity would never have gained that remarkable knowledge that was stored away.

But when we examine the situation in greater detail, we find that many individuals were often nipping at the heels of that discovery just before it was made. In fact, when we look back through history, we find that many people had similar realizations to one another at about the same time. Alexei Starobinskii put many of the pieces of inflation together before Alan Guth did; Georges Lematre and Howard Robertson put together the expanding Universe before Hubble did; and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga worked out the calculations of quantum electrodynamics before Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman did.

Einstein was the first to cross the finish line on a number of independent and remarkable scientific fronts. But had he never come along, many others were close behind him. Although he may have possessed every bit of dazzling genius that we often attribute to him, one thing is almost certain: Genius is not as unique and rare as we often assume it to be. With a lot of hard work and a little luck, almost any properly trained scientist can make a revolutionary breakthrough simply by stumbling upon the right realization at the right time.

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What if Einstein never existed? - Big Think

20h | Alan Burkitt-Gray

Fujitsu and a company working with the International Space Station have been named as among the first users of Quantum Origin, whats claimed to be the worlds first commercial product built using quantum computers.

Cambridge Quantum, which is now part of the US-UK group Quantinuum, says it can fit quantum-level security to existing networks, including software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) from Fujitsu, which has incorporated the technology into its products.

Duncan Jones, head of cyber security at Cambridge Quantum, said last night: We are kick-starting the quantum cyber security industry. He said the company will start to distribute [quantum] keys into cloud platforms.

Houtan Houshmand, principal architect at Fujitsu, said his company was planning to incorporate the technology into its SD-WAN products.

David Zuniga, business development manager at Axiom Space, said the technology has been tested on the International Space Station (ISS) and would lead to space tourism with researchers and scientists [who] could do their work in space with total security.

Cambridge Quantum founder and Quantinuum CEO Ilyas Khan said: This product could be used by anyone.

He said it should be used by organisations worrying about the threat from people sequestering data storing encrypted information for the time when quantum computers will also be available to decrypt it.

You cannot afford to be asleep at the wheel, said Khan. When should we be worried? Of course, now. He said existing classical systems could be protected by a quantum computer.

Jones said that the Quantum Origin typical end point might be a hardware security module that could be added to existing infrastructure. For large enterprises to add this might be a year or two, he said. Smaller businesses were slightly further out.

On prices, he said that a typical key using existing technology costs about US$1 a month. He implied that a Quantum Origin key would be cheaper but did not go into details.

Fujitsus Houshmand was also asked about pricing. I cant provide a cost, he said, saying that what Fujitsu has done so far is just a proof of concept.

Jones said that Quantinuum, which is a joint venture of Cambridge Quantum and Honeywell, is forming a number of partnerships, naming military supplier Thalys and public key infrastructure (PKI) specialist Keyfactor. This is how the technology will diffuse into the market.

He said: We want to make this product broadly available, but accepted that there were global security considerations. There are export control laws. We have to do a lot of due diligence.

Zuniga at Axiom Space, which is training its own crew for the ISS and is planning its own private space station, said that the US operating segment of the ISS, where Quantum Origin is to be used, has a firewall to keep our data secure from the Russian sector. If we cant secure our data, it hurts a really expensive asset thats floating in space.

Khan, asked about possible exports to China and Russia, said: We are answerable to the regulators. We are an American and a British company. Were not actually able to sell to adversaries.

Houshmand at Fujitsu agreed: We have to stay rigidly compliant.

Elaborating on the technology, Jones said: Quantum Origin is a cloud-based platform that uses a quantum computer from Quantinuum to product cryptographic keys.

He was asked whether companies had five years, as is often suggested, to install quantum-level protection for their data. Theyre wrong by about five years, he said.

Jones said Quantum Origin keys are the strongest that have ever been created or could ever be created, because they use quantum physics to produce truly random numbers.

Khan noted that the beta version of Quantum Origin has been tested on an IBM quantum network.

Quantinuum and Cambridge Quantum has a number of clients that have tested the technology, but they are operating under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), said Khan.

We have been working for a number of years now on a method to efficiently and effectively use the unique features of quantum computers in order to provide our customers with a defence against adversaries and criminals now and in the future once quantum computers are prevalent, he said.

He added: Quantum Origin gives us the ability to be safe from the most sophisticated and powerful threats today as well threats from quantum computers in the future.

Jones said: When we talk about protecting systems using quantum-powered technologies, were not just talking about protecting them from future threats. From large-scale takedowns of organisations, to nation state hackers and the worrying potential of hack now, decrypt later attacks, the threats are very real today, and very much here to stay. Responsible enterprises need to deploy every defence possible to ensure maximum protection at the encryption level today and tomorrow.

A quantum of disruptiion: Capacity's feature about quantum technology, its threat to data security and what it is also doing to protect security, is here

Originally posted here:

Fujitsu SD WAN and ISS are first users of quantum seciurity - Capacity Media