The Magic of the Second Quantum Revolution

Episode 2 - Quantum Technology Explained series

Link to Episode 1

The starting point in this episode is something scientists occasionally refer to as the first quantum revolution. It gave birth to microprocessors.

Using electrical signals and transistors, we can control the flow and path of electricity. Microprocessors are devices that utilise this to encode and process information. They are in laptops, mobile phones, dishwashers and about eight of them are in every car. These are what have built the modern information age.

They're powered by a material known as a semiconductor, the most famous of which is Silicon. Microprocessors contain a billion active switches or transistors. This is the peak of modern technology.

Their design is influenced through our understanding of quantum physics. Yet what is incredible and profound with microprocessors is that they represent our only rudimentary level of control over the quantum realm.

As an analogy, let's compare the quantum complexity of microprocessors to the idea of building pipes to control the flow of water. If we could looked closer, we would begin to see a new level of complexity: water molecules, salts, bacteria and more. We are beginning to think of technology at this deeper level of complexity by looking at the fundamental constituents of light and matter: individual atoms and photons.

This constitutes the basis of the second quantum revolution.

Quantum computing is not just faster and better computing, it is a fundamentally different way of processing information. It is not only about making a web-page load quicker.

When we talk about matter on the atomic scale, the behavior of nature breaks down. It becomes very different from what we're familiar with. You may be watching this video at home or in the office, but not at both places at the same time. This concept was thought to be just strange math for a long time, but we are beginning to see it in reality.

Imagine an atom. Let's treat this atom as the quantum analogue of a bit - a qubit. A regular bit can represent a 0 or 1. A qubit, however, can represent both 0 and 1 at the same time. The rules of quantum 'superposition' and 'entanglement' say that 100 qubits can simultaneously represent all 2 to the power 100 possibilities of how each atom can take 0 or 1. All of these possibilities, all at the same time. 2 to the power 100 is a pretty big number. 2 to the power 100 is the estimated number of atoms our earth consists of. A classical computer operating with bits can only consider one of each 2^100 possibilities at a time.

To get this same computational capacity on a classical computer, we would need to turn the whole planet into a memory card. Quantum computers allow us to solve problems that are practically inaccessible for today's supercomputers.

The second quantum revolution opens up a door towards resistless electricity transfer, personalised drug design, smarter machine learning models and real-time market simulations.

Just look back and see how the world has changed since the first quantum revolution.