The quantum world is an elusive, strange place, which doesn’t appear to resemble the one in which we live. All things in this world sit atop the bubbling froth of Plank-scale, space-time, and is not unlike the white-speckled static seen on a television with no signal. A confusing level of reality, which blurs both time and space to the macro-world observer. Time jumps around randomly, both forwards and back, resulting in a blur of recent-past, present and near-future. Euclidean concepts such as up, down, back and fourth are scrambled into a blurry cloud. If you think of it as a blur in space-time, you needn’t concern yourself with the quasi-realistic precepts of the Uncertainty Principle. Suffice to say that nothing you might divine from a given state of a quantum mechanical system will predict any future state of that system. One can only say that a given state, has a certain likelihood of being found, within the scope of all possible states, at any given instant. This says nothing about what the object is or exactly how it works only how it and others exactly like it should behave.
A quantum mechanical object has a physical manifestation in the macro-world sense. It is a bit of matter which occupies a given point in space-time. It’s proximity to the quantum froth distorts it’s existence with respect to our, macro-world, point of view. It’s macroscopic manifestation is best understood in terms of a cloud or field, such that the “bit” of matter is occupying a range of space-time, with near simultaneity. The complete description must take into account it’s macroscopic, cloud manifestation and it’s quantum-world, point-particle manifestation.
As an exercise, think of space-time as a body of clear water, having an observer at the surface, and another at the bottom…the water being agitated by a vibrating force, which causes the light rays travailing through the medium to become erratic. The two observers have not changed, but to the other, each appears as a distorted jumble of color. If these vibrations were regular enough and applied equally throughout the entire body of water, the patterns of distortion would become fairly uniform. The distorted images, though not an accurate representation of the original object, will distort the real picture, in a constant way. Each observer would be able to create some sort of representative, albeit distorted model of the other side.
Extending this analogy to our experience of the quantum world: quantum fluctuations distort the true nature of whatever quantum object we are observing, in some sort of universally-regular way; that rather than representing a illusion of light which could be swept aside, with no real-world consequences; the distortions we observe in space-time are in fact real consequences which can not be swept aside. When two objects in the water world come together, the apparent distortions eventually disappear as they approach each other and they simply interact as two macroscopic objects normally would. When a quantum object interacts, the space-time distortions do not disappear, and in fact, are/become reality… therefore, the object interacts with other things as both the macroscopic manifestation (field/cloud) and the microscopic manifestation (Particle).
Quantum mechanics requires a random, chaotic, universe to explain it’s predictions. This is antithetical to the placid, smooth, space-time for which Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity requires. He once asserted that,”god does not play dice with the universe.” In fact, this very divide still exists today and renders quantum mechanics and general relativity, mutually-exclusive to each other. Either one, or both of these theories must be incomplete. There has to be something missing… something more fundamental to at least one of them. Einstein worked on this problem in the latter 1/3 of his life, taking the fruitless effort all the way onto his deathbed. The unification of these two theories, yielding a complete description of the universe is the, “Holy Grail,” of physics, still today. It is sometimes called, “The Theory of Everything (TOE).”
Another consequence of the quantum mechanics is a bizarre interconnection found to exist between certain spatially-separate, quantum-mechanical systems. Quantum Entanglement, as it’s called, has been demonstrated experimentally. Einstein sarcastically refereed to this as “spukhafte Fernwirkung (translation: “Spooky Action at a distance).” His theory of Special Relativity placed an absolute speed limit on the universe: 3.0 x 10 8 m/s/s (aka: speed of light). The problem arises with the instantaneous nature of the entangled relationship… how do the two systems know what the other is going to do? He even stated that he would rather be a cobbler, than a physicist, if this universe were truly this way. Einstein was convinced that entanglement was nothing more than an error in the mathematics, which would eventually be discovered.
Quantum Entanglement has walked the gauntlet of science since that time, and has taken it’s place as a distinct sub-set of theoretical physics. In recent years, there has been an unparalleled effort to exploit this phenomena by scientists and industry alike. The computer-chip manufacturers have considerable interest in this area.
Computer-chip manufacturers have doubled the speed, resolution and capacity of computer components about every two years (More’s Law). Manufacturers have already began to run into roadblocks, stemming from the physical laws, which govern the macro-universe. Speed of light (relativistic) issues, entropy(order)/enthalpy(heat) issues (thermodynamics), and quantum mechanical limitations all stand in the way of progress. The speed of computer processors has already began to approach these limitations, forcing manufacturers to concentrate on distributing tasks to multiple, parallel, processors instead. It won’t be long before this approach reaches it’s limitations. The quantum world provides the only known hope in circumventing the relativistic limitations which surely apply here, in the macro-world. Entanglement theory boasts the most obvious breach of relativity and therefore, is a good place to begin looking. Many, if not all of the largest manufacturers have teamed up with academia to investigate this and other quantum phenomena.
Quantum Information Theory (QIT) as it’s called, is a collaboration of Academic Physicists, Academic Computer Scientists, Computer Software Companies and chip manufacturers. The goal of this effort it to exploit quantum effects, and make a faster, more powerful computer. Theoretically, processing would not be restricted to the normal linearity of normal space-time, operations could occur in the cloud of quantum-mechanical space-time. This would allow for simultaneous operations to occur in a distribution of time around a given moment, instead of the restrictive, sequential nature of time that applies to the macro-world. Entanglement might allow for instantaneous, wireless communication; possibly allowing separate quantum computers to act as one. The possibilities are numerous and exciting however, there is no guarantee that any of this effort will pay off.
There are few other human endeavors which require the better part of one’s lifetime to learn and, probably the rest of it fruitlessly toiling away, in obscurity. The investments in material and resources to merely make an attempt to detect things in the quantum world are outside the means of all but the wealthiest nations. All of this investment must be made knowing full and well that the thing you spend your whole life and national fortune on, may have never, really existed in the first place. Even worse (and much more likely), you will never get close enough to the object of your quest, to determine if it is real or not. Failure is not just a possibility but is mostly probable. In spite of all these things, there are individuals and societies willing to make these sacrifices for the greater good of mankind. This is not to say that the payoff wouldn’t be monumental and deservedly so, but to devote an entire life or an entire fortune in the pursuit of these elusive concepts is quite a tall order indeed.
