What is Quantum Computing? - BBC Click

this week the wide world of 360 video the artistic world of Marina Abramovic and the strange world of quantum computers imagine a computer that could crack the world's most secure codes in minutes design extraordinary new medicines even pave the way to intelligent machines big tech companies like Google IBM and Microsoft are all trying to be the first to achieve a breakthrough in the field of quantum computing but well we're not quite there yet at the moment if you want a quantum computer you need all of this you need your ionizing lasers your cooling lasers and your processor you need all of this and currently all this can do is add a 0 and a 1 but it does do it in a really cool way quantum computers harness weird wonderful phenomenon seen only at very small scales the data in an ordinary computer is represented as bits each of which can either be 0 or 1 a quantum computer instead uses quantum bits or qubits now these qubits can be both 0 and 1 at the same time this is called superposition and it's a key feature of a quantum computers unique powers so when a quantum computer adds a 0 and a 1 it's also adding a 1 and a 0 and a 1 and a 1 and a 0 and a 0 all at the same time so number-crunching could in theory be done much faster on a quantum computer there are a few really important things that we know they will be able to do if we can ever build them so one thing is searching through a database let's say you've got a list of about a million items say and you want to find one particular item through that list well all an ordinary computer can do is look through that list one item at a time look at the first item the second item the third item until eventually you find the item that you're looking for a quantum computer can in some sense look at all those items simultaneously we know that quantum computers will be able to help artificial intelligences learn better learn faster optimizing things designing things if you're trying to design they say that the shape of a car so that air will flow over it in exactly the right way that's an optimization problem it looks like quantum computers are going to be extremely good at that and then there's code breaking if you give an ordinary computer a code to break it will try every possible combination one at a time but give a quantum computer a code to break and it can try all the codes at once this is a huge area of application of quantum computers and it's really the financially the driving force in putting money into the industry and persuading people to really try to build these things the first government which has a functional quantum computer which can break break into secret messages is going to be as a big advantage and maybe we want to try and hide away the fact that they've got those capabilities and if super position wasn't weird enough a quantum computers qubits can be paired up or entangled and then can instantaneously affect each other from anywhere else in the universe well that's all very well in theory but it is really hard in practice at Sussex University researchers are preparing for the challenge of scaling up their prototype quantum computers to take them from handfuls of qubits on the lab bench to industrial scale so what do you see is an actual working quantum computer as we're filming this you can literally see an atom for example be in one state and another state simultaneously and what you see on the screen is the evidence that really occurs that you really the atoms and this very very strange and counterintuitive state so quantum computers have been in a way for a long long time the holy grail of science and and with that it actually seemed nearly impossible to builtin and people felt maybe it's just never possible to build virtual machine the reason why it's so hard because to control quantum effects in such a way allowing us to build a large-scale quantum computer is tremendously hard quantum effects like that an atom can be at two different places at the same time more entanglement with Einstein referred to spooky he said just so hard to control at the moment these prototypes offer a glimpse of how these computers might work in the future but how will we use them when we have them what is a quantum computer program the basic building blocks of a quantum computer program are really very alien to us they're things like superposition and entanglement those are the right high-level concepts to be to put into our quantum computer programs but it's very hard for the human brain to understand what entanglement is and what its consequences are thinking of qubits is connected by pieces of string actually works extremely well to help us design and predict designer quantum programs and predict what they will do so perhaps a high-level quantum programming language of the future could look like a sort of could look like a knot or could look like a children's game with untangling the fishing lines and see who's got which fish you could imagine drawing all these strings and having them connected to each other and going up and going down and coiled around and the pattern of how those strings interact that pattern is your content program I do feel the programmers have a little bit of time to sort their software out though because the hardware is also still a work in progress I've gone underground to see Oxford University's quantum computer the lab is a wizard's paradise of lasers vacuum chambers and traps for atom sized particles in the lab they've achieved a world record level of control over their quantum bits they can even show off by making a single qubit glow in Morse code see L I see kaif click what will your quantum computer looks like you won't be this size thing so ideally it looks incredibly boring and incredibly small so when we build something like this it takes an optics tables this is 2 meters by 1 meter by 1 meter high we think we can get this down to something that size of a shoebox in the next 5 years once you've got everything in there once we have everything that my place machine down optimized and rather than made by physicists made by engineers to make something that actually works rather than has enough knobs on that when you have enough people twisting them they do something right once you're not looking to put more and more qubits into the same box ie what we want to do is build devices that can contain about 5 or 10 cubits we build many of these devices and hook them together of our network this is the same way as if you have a supercomputer nowadays you don't have one big computer you have lots of smaller computers that hook together in data center these data centers thrumming with lots and lots of different machines and lots of blinking lights that's what we envisage these things are it does sound like it's not the most efficient design if you're plugging lots of these things together with optic fiber rather than making a quantum computer that has 50 cubits in one place yeah the most efficient device we can ever build and have all the qubits being able to talk to every other qubit and that's really you know where ideally you'd want to be but you'll always get to the point where you can't put any more qubits in your device where you're built a device is so big you can't build a bigger one and at that point what we want to do is have a network we can build up so once you've got as big as you can with these techniques you can then network them together to build bigger networks the huge potential of quantum computing has attracted big tech players Google told us it will have something big to announce in March 2018 iBM has a 20 cubic quantum computer the researchers can program over the Internet both these companies are trying to build reliable quantum computers of around 50 cubits now at this point they will achieve something called quantum supremacy which sounds world-changing but it might not be why I don't like the phrase is that when you cross that boundary nothing instantaneously magical happens it's just the point at which you can't predict what the Machine would do it's the point that the machine might be useful for something but to be honest we haven't worked out anything that has a 60 cubits quantum computer could usefully do so it's into the uncharted territory very exciting but it's not the point at which the quantum hardware is supreme you should not throw where your iPhone or your desktop computer or even your supercomputer and have a quantum computer instead so with more tech companies getting serious about quantum computing there is now a place for them to show off their ideas it is the quantum technologies fair in London and Kat Hawkins has been along to see what is on the quantum horizon when it comes to quantum computing a lot of the research still seems to be happening very much in academia but I wanted to find out how much of it is being taken away from the lab bench for applications in the real world every stall at this fair is using the same tech used in quantum computing the principles of trapping manipulating and measuring tiny atoms sized particles but the practical applications here are creative and potentially life-changing from diamonds used in heart disease sensing to capturing individual virus particles they're really designed to be able to measure very very sensitively at very very small scales so it's ideal for things like nanoparticles like viruses and indeed for measuring chemical signatures as well use the mouse to move that scale bar back and forth it should be fairly obvious when it flashes really bright that's when it Wiggles around that's when you've got a particle trapped in your resonator the ultimate aim is that viruses could be picked up using this diagnostic tool but the main focus now for most people here is on overcoming the engineering challenge of making large bulky systems a lot lot smaller heavy industry all the way through to defense and security transport and then healthcare technologies it's incredible to see how many stores here are researching so many different areas and they're all working together with an open source mentality along with a lot of investment the British government spent 270 million pounds over the last five years on quantum technology research the collaborative element especially the number of things that MPL is involved in because we have a lot of the core technology and science and we're just looking you know what are the actual applications in the UK business world from afar a lot of the applications here still look like complex machinery but and Curtis has been looking into its potentials in an important area far far away so one of the main applications we can use for quantum technologies is quantum sensors and what we're doing in this experiment is we want a sense greenhouse gases and measure how much there is how that's changing over time and one good way to monitor large-scale systems is from space to put something properly on a satellite it has to go through all this space qualifying test so every item in there would have to be space qualified most of the fiber technology isn't so good in space due to radiation you know effects but there's no reason why this couldn't be miniaturizing for open space it's just the next stage of funding it's so hard to be here today and not feel excited about quantum technologies but one thing everybody who said to me is that their particular real-world applications are a few years in the future still so when it comes to fronting computing it's still very much a case of watch this space hello and welcome to the week in tech it was the week that the Federal Communications Commission in America voted to repeal rules on net neutrality which had stopped Internet service providers from offering different speeds and priorities for traffic online the extraordinarily elongated interstellar asteroid Kumu amoA was being checked for signs of alien technology and here on earth the faces of two billion people can be compared in a matter of seconds with Minority Report style system dragonfly I unveiled in China it was also the week that Netflix was caught up in a creepy viewing controversy after revealing on Twitter that fifty-three subscribers watched the holiday film a Christmas friend's every day for 18 days in a row Netflix defended the tweet saying it represented overall trends and not specific individuals the city of San Francisco has banned the use of delivery robots on most of its sidewalks stating not all innovation is all that great for society meanwhile Dutch police say it may not have been such a good idea to use Eagles to catch drones after all who could have guessed seen here unclick the birds were trained to snatch the machines in the sky but the cost of keeping the Eagles was too high for too low demand and it didn't always do what they were told and finally if you're missing Harry Potter don't despair artificial intelligence may have a solution for you a new chapter has been created for a book called Harry Potter and what looked like a portrait of a large pile of ash its plot twists include Harry dipping Hermione in hot sauce and Ron turning into spiders and trying to eat her - fan wizard now earlier in the year we looked at some of the 360 cameras that are taken off in 2017 Dan filmed with the new kid on the block the insta one in Berlin and he came back very pleased with it easy to use lots of features including this bullet time mode a bit like in the film The Matrix where you can get the picture of yourself from all angles but what are the more established names in photography got to offer us well with Christmas just around the corner this time we sent down to a suitably festive place to put two prosumer 360 cams through their paces the ancient city of Bath hosts a very traditional Christmas market one that I want to catch in the round I've got two cameras for the job ones from Kodak the other is Nick Homs they look pretty similar with two ultra wide-angle lenses capturing everything before the two images are stitched together in camera but look closer and you'll see the Kodak sporting two different lenses one smaller than the other super white 235 degree lens it's also got the tiniest remote control in the world and a slightly higher price tag than the Nikon our producer mayonnaise has the Kodak while I'm putting the Nick on to its paces now we don't just want to test these cameras out in the daylight when all the conditions are absolutely perfect for these cameras we want to test them out to see what they're like as it starts to get dark well the bright lights be a problem and well we see all of the detail time to go full wonder and see who's 360 is best please dive in ladies don't let me get in your way and in no time at all I found the festive liquor stand not just wine but flavored vodkas here and the nickens not put off by those flashing lights but the image is a little dark so we'll brighten it for you in post there we go and now you can see the other problem the image stitching means I've almost lost my head before touching a job the Kodak's picture is brighter than the nickens but we found that the quality from that super wide angle lens was softer than the smaller lens it houses on the other side of the device of course you're best off with a stick attached to both of these cams otherwise your hands get sort of in the way now to make the test Pharaoh we decided to see how these camps fared back to back your front to front to back to fun well it's difficult to tell to be honest we shot them side-by-side we found a 360 globe camera and it's the nikon showing off more natural colors benefiting from a more accurate white balance although some might prefer the warmer kodak results as it's very Christmasy at the chilly side is shop again Kodak warmed things up while Nichkhun kept things more natural and crisp both cameras struggled to perfectly stitch their two shots together this is the raw footage with no touching up and the nickens done a reasonable job the stitching point is more visible on the kodak partly because of the different qualities of those two lenses on the upside its kodak that offers the ability to play with how the images are stitched together in it's free software something the nickens more basic offering lacks for sure if fun the kodak also offers greater flexibility when playing back what you shot this is little planet mode and if you want to do it on the Nikon then you'll need some third-party 360 software which may mean additional cost finally the thing that everyone forgets when they use a camera sound we reckon both do a great job but the Nikon is slightly clearer although the Kodak offers the possibility of attaching an external mic so which camera will enthusiasts be hoping Santa brings them this year we think the Kodak edges it for easier post production while the Nikon has a better shot but if you're hoping for a trouble-free cinematic seamless result for under 400 pounds you may have to wait until something else takes off at least for now this is a cute art a virtual reality arts platform and a gallery without walls and it's about to launch with VR works by some of the world's leading contemporary artists amongst these works is one by Marina Abramovic the self-confessed grandmother of performance art who pushes her own body to the limits as a vehicle to challenge and move people she seems to want to talk to me but the water is it's rising she family in real life when someone rescues another person or office aid of any kind there is a transfer of energy do you think she wants me to touch the glass me oh oh okay right now I'm somewhere very cold and everything seems to be going wrong as always with VR you really get a sense of scale I mean that ice shelf looks absolutely enormous and it's crashing down right in front of me this work is an expression of marinas fear that humans will not survive the consequences of climate change if we don't change our behavior they covered in spray and now there's a note I will walk instead of drive I will reuse what I can I will reduce the waste I create Marina wants to leave the participants with the feeling that they should do something good for the planet we have to save this planet which we are living in because what travel are interesting is to create the literally contract with the you know with the planet Earth and give my word of honor that I will do something to say you are pretty well known for pushing your body further than most people would want to push their bodies here you appear virtually in a tank of water but I get the sense that you still did some pretty real stuff to make it seem as real as possible you know actually to do this I have to really be in the water and then we have to really be in the swimming pool and with the two divers holding my legs that I can really go in and sink and feel what means floaties and what means actually dying if you don't have any more than air to breathe so it's funny that you have to do something which is virtual but you still have to do physically before you've said that you don't think your performances can be captured adequately with with photos or video because you need to be there you need the experiences is actually physically being there and I wonder whether virtual reality is close enough to being there that's why you chose it because it's it's kind of almost being there as it's very important that kind of energy dialogue between audience and the performer and the only the thing can catch it was before was just video because you can get sound in moments virtual realities is really another Stepfather because you can go around the objects you can interact you can do this but still I think that so much question how much energy it carries I actually can trust Ram be transmitted from the real performance into that the virtual body the run of the mesmerising Marina Abramovic and we'll hear more from marina in next week's program which is the Christmas show so expect tons of sensible journalism and no fun whatsoever maybe in the meantime you can follow us on Facebook and on Twitter where we live at BBC click thanks for watching and we'll see you next week for Christmas

Channel: BBC Click

Views: 292,513

Rating: 4.7398477 out of 5

Keywords: bbc, bbc click, bbc news, bbc world, quantum, quantum computing, 360, virtual reality, augmented reality, vr, ar, sussex, quantum supremacy, marina abramovic, art, installation, spencer kelly, superposition, university of oxford, facebook, twitter, climate

Id: 7HXTt7HMDE8

Length: 24min 30sec (1470 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/deadly_inhale]

Google has used quantam computing to punch through to a parallel Earth. We will get to see how an alternate universe did the new star wars movies.

[u/merlinthemagic7]

We all know decoherence is the problem, how do we avoid information leaking from a system? Well let’s figure out how to tame the neutrino.

[u/LunaDiego]

Computers use bits of information and your computer can have a bit on or off representing a 1 or a 0. 8 Bits in a byte, etc. Quantum computers can have bits be on, off, left, right, maybe top and bottom so a bit can be a lot more things. So maybe you do some crazy math and the answer is 2 different numbers or you get a maybe result and not just a yes or no result. Also allows for advanced encryption because you would know if the qbit (quantum bit) changed state because it was spied on. Should also open up secure communication at any distance faster then the speed of light.

[u/[deleted]]

The best way I've learned to think about quantum computing is to think of the universe as a computer.

Normal computers work like normal physics. To the point that people have computers from marbles and shoots.

Quantum computers work like atoms and electrons, where it's more of a cloud of probabilities. So they can solve problems that involve searching a large search space of probabilities.

An electron is able to find the lowest energy state in a system because it can exist in a bunch of places at once, kinda.

For normal physics, you'd have to test each position of the system to find the lowest one.

Please correct my thinking if this is wrong. It's just my surface understanding of it.