exploits

Usually on this website, we use to point out news, generally technological and surprising news, we understand them, we eventually translate them and we provide the result, here, in light version.

Today, it's gonna be a little bit different.
The news is surprising, ok.
But we did not understand it. At least, not totally.

And it looks so absurd that we give you first the link to the source, for credibility reasons : nature.com, february.

Onur Hosten and its colleagues from the university of Illinois have created a computer that works while it's switched off, a computer that finds a element in a database .. but without really looking at it!

This computer uses the laws of quantum mechanic to execute a lot of operations in one shot, where a classical computer should execute them one by one.
It's possible by the fact that the quantum objects, like atoms or photons, can be in states of superposition, a mix of states which are mutually exclusive in ordinary objects. For example, a quantum switch could be simultaneously ON and OFF !

This is the key of the quantum computer : it can be in superposition of 2 states : on and off. The "on" state sets a footprint in the historical data of the "off" state, the first can influence the latter.

Before looking for an aspirin, try this :
some people prefer talking about 2 different universes : in one universe, the computer is running, in the other one, he's not. Switched off, we can think than the computer is running, but in another parallele universe.

There are still problem. For example the fact that the result of a quantum process cannot be fixed accurately, but just with probabilities. It's like saying that the computer finds the answer quickly, but that it can be wrong :)
To correct that and influence the probabilities, the scientists use another well-known quantum phenomenon, the quantum zeno effect : the result changes because it is observed !

We told you....

another article, in french: techno-sciences, february

Labels: exploits