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Do you know that sometimes you find yourself confronting an enemy spacecraft in a Wild West-inspired laser duel where the first shooter wins?
What if I told you that a group of researchers (a murder of physicists?) Offered you a way to manipulate the very structure of time and space so that no matter who shot first, you both die? This is probably not the best argument you have heard to develop quantum computers. But it's interesting.
The researchers, led by scientists at the University of Queensland, discovered "a new kind of quantum temporal order." It's like a trip back in time, but for the universe instead of you. The research focuses on a thought experiment in which an object big enough to affect local gravity is placed in a state of quantum superposition at the moment a series of events unfolds.
The physicist Magdalena Zych of the University of Queensland explained Science Daily:
Imagine two spaceships that were asked to shoot at a specific time while dodging the attack of the other.
If one of the two pulls too early, he will destroy the other.
According to Einstein's theory, a powerful enemy could use the principles of general relativity by placing a gigantic object – like a planet – closer to a ship to slow the passage of time. Due to the time lag, the farthest vessel from this massive object will fire earlier, destroying the other.
Einstein's theories of relativity, however, represent only half of the ingredients of the thought experiment. The rest comes from another theory: quantum mechanics. According to quantum mechanics, the dominant theory of how our universe works, any object should be able to be placed in a state of superposition – even an entire planet.
Superposition is a quantum concept in which a particle, or system – in this case a planet – is in two distinctly different physical states at the same time. This was best explained through Schodinger's Cat, another thought experiment. Imagine a superimposed particle as a rotating part: it is the head and the tail until landing.
The researchers claim that if the planet adjacent to one of the spacecraft was in a state of superposition, these quantum effects would logically extend to time as well. Zych's explanation continues:
There would be a new way for the sequence of events to unfold, none of the events being the first nor the second – but in a true quantum state to be both first and second.
No matter who fired first, the quantum state of the planet would have a greater influence on how the events unfolded – I imagine the two spaceships explode and the lasers go out a few seconds later , like sad spatial confetti.
All this seems impossible, but as any fan of Douglas Adams knows, a trip back in time is simply improbable. And we can work with that. According to Zych, this frenetic thought experiment (and the calculations that corroborate it) have the potential to directly inform the development of quantum computers of tomorrow. She said Science Daily:
We are currently working on quantum computers that – very simply – could actually go through time to perform their operations much more efficiently than devices operating in a fixed time order, as we know in our "normal" world.
Classic computers have to do things in order. If, then, go! it's like that that they work. Theoretically, quantum computers can simply "go" to the answer. It's a bit more complex than that, but essentially, physicists write the rules of the universe in real time in 2019, and will continue to do so for an imaginable future.
You can read the entire research paper here.
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