Revolutionizing Computers
When Alan Turing invented the Turing machine in 1936, a system that incorporates computational algorithms, humanity was first introduced to the outstanding technology of computers. Nowadays, computers are an integral part of daily life whether it be for communication, entertainment, or education. However, people often encounter the inconvenience of computers glitching or going unresponsive. To fix these problems, scientists and engineers came up with an unexpected but ingenious solution: quantum mechanics.
Ordinary computers operate through semiconductors known as transistors. These transistors act as gateways that either allow or do not allow electrons to flow through circuits. Depending on the electron flow, which the transistor regulates, a computer will either record one or zero. These ones and zeros are what scientists call “bits.” With permutations of these bits, not only are computers able to computate but also record data.
However, such binary characteristics of ordinary computers limit the capacity in which computers can process information. Because bits only allow two possible outcomes, ones or zeros, permutations that the computer can create with these bits are often limited when data become large. This is the reason why computers malfunction, like when Macbooks have a spinning rainbow wheel whenever the device is processing too much.
A way to increase the capacity of computers’ processing abilities is to create more permutations of these bits. To do this, scientists used a concept from quantum physics called superposition, a subatomic property in which particles can exhibit more than two states simultaneously. In terms of computers, quantum mechanics allow ones and zeros to exist simultaneously. As a result, computers are able to process information not in binary states, but in tertiary states called qubits: ones, zeros, and both ones and zeros.
With this problem in mind, scientists developed quantum computers that can computate data at a rate significantly higher than classical computers. Data that a classical computer can process with 16,000 bits requires only 10 qubits from a quantum computer. The scale of information that quantum computers encapsulate and compute is enormous compared to classical computers.
However, it seems like quantum computers are not yet able to be incorporated into daily life. In addition to its gargantuan size, quantum computers can only operate in environments that have a temperature of almost absolute zero(-273 degrees celsius). The reason for this is that quantum particles are volatile and vulnerable to heat. Heat can create errors in the qubits that overall disrupts the computations of the system. Yet, the development of quantum computers allowed scientists to calculate and simulate various data that were previously thought to be impossible to process. For example, quantum computers can enable scientists to analyze complex data within subatomic particles that classical computers could not.