The future is longer. The future is quantum. (Part 1)

"For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible." - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

Over the last 150 years, we human beings have been making a mockery of the word “impossible” by achieving feat after feat that people once thought could not be done.?

Whether it was the invention of the automobile and airplane, putting man on the moon, or building a worldwide communication and information exchange network (the Internet) that has utterly revolutionized the way we interact and live, we have been knocking down one “impossible” after the other on the path to a world that is beyond the wildest imagination of anyone alive a mere 200 years ago.

Despite all the “impossibles” that we have accomplished, there remains at least one major impossibility that we still haven’t figured out - immortality. For as long as humans have existed, we have accepted death as inevitable, and something to be accepted passively as “part of life”.?

But what if that doesn’t have to be true? What if we may be able to figure out how to live forever and achieve immortality? And what if the key to figuring out how to become immortal lay in a computing chip that can fit in the palm of your hand??

Intrigued? Read on!

What is quantum computing?

The answer to how we can stay alive forever could be hidden in the bewildering world of quantum computing - a groundbreaking and relatively new field of computing that leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to perform calculations at speeds that are simply unattainable by even the best classical supercomputers currently in existence.?

Quantum computers and classical computers are similar in some respects. For example, they both have chips and circuits, use logic gates to process information, and are both operated by algorithms.?

That’s more or less where the similarities between the two types of computers end though.?

To start with, quantum computers look nothing like regular computers, instead resembling something you might expect to see in a futuristic sci-fi movie from the 1950s with large complex machinery and tubing that makes quantum computers resemble chandeliers in appearance, like the quantum computer pictured below.

Not exactly your MacBook Pro….

The most important difference, however, is in how these two types of computers process information. Traditional computers rely on binary bits, 0s and 1s, to represent the on or off state of a current.?

On the other hand, quantum computers leverage qubits, or quantum bits. Qubits can be made of various materials that behave like quantum objects (like atoms), such as nanocrystals, defects in diamond particles, etc.?

Qubits are able to process information in a fundamentally different way than normal bits through something called “superposition”. Whereas a bit has to be either a 0 or a 1 at any given point of time, qubits can exist in both states simultaneously. To put it in layman’s terms, imagine flipping a coin. When you flip a coin, it lands either heads or tails (0 or 1). However, when you flip a coin and it’s still in the air, you could argue that it’s both heads (0) and tails (1) at the same time.?

Similarly, qubits are able to exist in multiple states simultaneously, which allows a system of multiple qubits to process multiple solutions at the same time.

To put it another way, imagine you’re playing chess and want to predict all the possible moves an opponent can make. A regular computer would go through all the possible moves in succession. A quantum computer, on the other hand, will simulate all possible moves almost instantaneously in a fraction of the time that a classical computer would take.?

This characteristic of quantum computers drastically reduces the time it takes to perform calculations or other computing tasks.?

Though quantum computing is in its infancy, its computational superiority is already being demonstrated in the field.?

Recently, Google revealed its latest quantum chip, Willow, and pitted it against one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers in a test called a “random circuit sampling benchmark.”

The results? Astonishing.

Willow completed the calculation in under 5 minutes. The other computer would have needed 10 septillion (that is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) years to complete the calculation, or a quadrillion times longer than how long scientists believe the universe has been in existence!

Computing power like that is hardly conceivable to the human mind. If you think that Generative AI is changing the world right now, be sure that quantum computing will be just as disruptive, transforming the foundations of nearly every industry imaginable, be it finance, cybersecurity, logistics, energy, or anything else.?

While the impact of quantum computing on every industry would be fascinating to explore, I have to rein myself in and remind myself that this is a longevity newsletter!

Next week, we’ll follow Alice down the rabbit hole and examine how quantum computing might be the key to unlocking eternal life.?

Sound exciting? Then stay tuned for part 2!?