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No_Ninja3309_NoNoYes t1_j2hv3z1 wrote

The quantum world deals with the very small. It's really hard to grasp it because we're not able to imagine that kind of scale. The atom is like a miniature solar system with lots of empty space. In the beginning of the previous century Rutherford bombarded gold atoms with alpha particles, helium, and some of the particles were scattered back. There were other strange experiments showing the interaction of light and slits which made people think that light was made of waves but also behaved as waves. The photo electric effect showed that light can interact with matter, producing electricity.

Theoreticians came up with mathematical functions. These correspond to probability. Quantum wave functions. In this theory some things are unknowable. Einstein scoffed that 'God does not play with dice!' But the theory has been tested. We can compute probabilities. This is done with special integrals, mathematical functions. But the gist of it is, that particles are not localized. They can go though potential barriers. Quantum tunneling. It's equivalent in our world to walking through a wall. And there is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that you can't know everything about a particle. You can measure certain properties accurately but that will prevent you from knowing more about other properties.

The wave functions when turned into numbers through the appropriate operations that we can use give a probability between one and zero. However, in the quantum world everything is much quicker than in our world and very little energy makes quite a difference. Quantum states want to be in their ground state. You can think of them as pendulums in rest most of the time. If you give them a quantum of energy, they want to go back. This happens in such a short time that none of us can really imagine it.

Unfortunately, we need to bring qubits out of their ground state to do meaningful computation. This means shielding them from outside influences. Which currently requires a special mix of helium isotopes, tubing, and other stuff. This part is hard to shrink.

Also because the quantum world is a busy chaos and decoherence, going back to ground state, exists, quantum computers make many errors. Algorithms to fix them are still in development.

Qubits work fast and due to their nature can explore possibilities that classic computers simply can't. They could be useful for AI systems which will have impact for consumers. For the foreseeable future the resources required are unaffordable for almost everyone.

But never say never. If we have better algorithms and someone figures out how to keep the qubits coherent longer at somewhat higher temperature, perhaps just by having many qubits we could get closer to your wish

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