MurderDoneRight t1_iwgkq9m wrote
Reply to comment by supermoderators in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek
If you want your mind blown you should look into quantum computers! They're insane! They can create time crystals, that's crystals that can change state without the need to add energy or loss of energy creating true perpetual motion! And with time crystals we might be able to create even faster quantum computers by using them as quantum memory.
And even though I have no idea what any of it means, I am excited because this is real life sci-fi stuff! There's a great mini-series called DEVS where they use a quantum computer and it's nuts they exists in real life.
And you might say "yeah yeah everyone has said there's new tech on the horizon that will change the world but it always takes way longer for anything close to be developed" but check this out: The IDEA of time crystals was thought up just 10 years ago, since then they have not just been proven to exist but we can create them and yeah deep dive into everything quantum computers are doing it's just speeding up exponentially every day!
bigtallsob t1_iwgosoo wrote
Keep in mind that anything that appears to be "true perpetual motion" at first glance always has a catch that prevents it from being actual perpetual motion.
SAI_Peregrinus t1_iwhcom7 wrote
Perpetual motion is fine, perpetual motion you can extract enirgy from isn't. An object in a stable orbit with no drag (hypothetical truly empty space) around another object would never stop or slow down.
A time crystal is a harmonic oscillator that neither loses nor gains energy while oscillating. It's "perpetual motion" in the "orbits forever" sense, not the "free energy" sense. Also has nothing to do with quantum computers.
pterofactyl t1_iwinoyy wrote
Well no because for that “no drag” space to exist, it would need to be in an imaginary world, so perpetual motion does not exist either way.
MurderDoneRight t1_iwh3wgv wrote
True, a perpetual motion machine is impossible according to the laws of physics. But time crystals are not a machine, it's an entirely new kind of exotic matter on par with supersolids, superfluids and Bose-Einstein condensates!
bigtallsob t1_iwh8ebm wrote
Yeah, but you are dealing with quantum funkiness. There's always a catch, like with quantum entanglement, and how despite one's state affecting the other regardless of distance, you can't use it for faster than light communication, since the act of observing the state changes the state.
MurderDoneRight t1_iwhacjs wrote
Yeah, like I mentioned in my first comment I don't really know anything so you may be right too. 😉
But I don't know, there's a lot of cool discoveries being done right now anyway. I did read up on quantum entanglement too because of this years Nobel prize winner in physics who used it to prove that the universe is not "real". How crazy is that?
SAI_Peregrinus t1_iwhc0ph wrote
Time crystals have no direct relation to quantum computers.
Quantum computers currently are very limited, but may be able to eventually compute Fourier Transforms in an amount of time that's a polynomial function of the input size (aka polynomial time), even for large inputs. That would be really cool! There are a few other problems they can solve for which there's no known classical polynomial time algorithm, but the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) is the big one. AFAIK nobody has yet managed to even factor the number 21 with a quantum computer, so they're a tad impractical still. Also there's no proof that classical computers can't do everything quantum computers can do just as efficiently (i.e. that BQP ≠ P), but it is strongly suspected.
Quantum annealers like D-wave's do exist now, but solve a more limited set of problems, and can't compute the QFT. It's not certain whether they're even any faster than classical computers.
I've made several enormous simplifications above.
mule_roany_mare t1_iwgpo4d wrote
Devs was an imperfect show, but good enough to be measured against one.
It deserved a bigger audience & should get a watch.
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