Robust topological quantum computing

[John Clark]

In the July 21 2017 issue of the journal Science Qing Lin He reports he was able to move Majorana quasiparticles in a nanowire, their existence has been shown before but this is the first time they could be moved around. Majorana quasiparticles (sometimes called Anyons) should obey non-Abelian statistics, which just means its non-commutative. But that is a big deal  because something like that would be ideal for use as the working material in a Quantum Computer because they would be far more resistant to quantum decoherence, the biggest enemy to practical quantum computing.

​The amount of conductance a nanowire containing Anyons has comes in discrete jumps and is a function of the topological class (the number of times the spacetime worldlines of the Anyons cross over), and it's not easy to change the topological class of entangled Anyons,  and that makes them resistant to quantum decoherence. As a example you probably can't change the topological class of your shoelaces (nerd-speak for untie your shoelaces) with just any old random bump, a much more intricate maneuver would be necessary. Another way of looking at it is that each Anyon is really only half a particle so a single Qbit of information is stored in both,  so for a Qbit to be scrambled both Anyons would have to be hit at the same time, and they can be as far apart as you like. The next step is to get the Anyons to actually perform a calculation and so far none has even been able to add 1+1, however once that goal has been reached I think it would be possible to scale up to something far larger much more quickly than other approaches.

This certainly isn't the only approach to Quantum Computing, instead of Anyons companies like IBM, and Google and D-wave are using other things like ions and photons and superconducting junctions, and unlike Anyons they have already been able to perform a few simple calculations. Only Microsoft is betting entirely on the more radical topological approach, time will tell which method is better but it would be ironic if a company with a reputation for being plodding ends up being the most innovative of all. At the very least you've got to give them  credit for taking the coolest path, and it might be the most lucrative too,

John K Clark      

[spudb...@aol.com]

Now all we have to do is figure out what multiple Qbit computing can do for us? (He said sarcastically).

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 a spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

​> ​

Now all we have to do is figure out what multiple Qbit computing can do for us? (He said sarcastically).

​Well for a start large scale manipulations of Qbits could destroy Bitcoin and render ​nearly every encryption method currently used on the Internet obsolete, but that would be one of the more minor consequences of a Qbit world. Once a general purpose Quantum Computer larger than about 100 Qbits is built human civilization will never be the same again; assuming of corse it's physically possible to build such a machine, and it's looking increasingly likely that it is. Google says they hope to have a 49 Qbit computer late this year or early next. 

 John K Clark    

 

[spudb...@aol.com]

Since it seems that there is no barrier in physics to halt the development of super-big computing, via quantum-bio-photonic computing, what sort of change do you anticipate, with the advent of 100 Qbit computing? Better chatbots?  

[John Clark]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

​> ​

Since it seems that there is no barrier in physics to halt the development of super-big computing, via quantum-bio-photonic computing,

​Can't yet be absolutely certain of that, but it's looking that way​.

​> ​

what sort of change do you anticipate, with the advent of 100 Qbit computing? Better chatbots?  

​

Yes, chatbots will get better, much better, ASTRONOMICALLY

​ ​

better, in fact

​better ​

than most chatbots that post on this list.  And a quantum computer should be able to solve the 3D Protein Folding problem, the discovery of that tool alone will cause

​ ​

changes to society

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of a

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magnitude similar to that of the

​ ​

discover

​y

 fire could

​ ​

be used as a tool.

​ 

 John K Clark​

 

[spudb...@aol.com]

Without attempting to place works in your mouth, the achievement of hypercomputing such as seems possible with quantum computing, yielding processing up to 100 qbits per second, used to resolve the Protein Folding Problem, what, in your opinion, will the world then, look like? Fire took hundreds of thousands of years, to make a great impact, say, with doing thing like burning forests to make way for agriculture, and then metal making. I am guessing you would agree with a much faster impact then what I have described from archeology? We're looking at The Jetsons, K. Eric Drexler's Nanotechnology, Star Trek??

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Jul 28, 2017 12:14 am
Subject: Re: Robust topological quantum computing

[John Clark]

> On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

​> ​

Without attempting to place works in your mouth, the achievement of hypercomputing such as seems possible with quantum computing, yielding processing up to 100 qbits per second, used to resolve the Protein Folding Problem, what, in your opinion, will the world then, look like? Fire took hundreds of thousands of years, to make a great impact, say, with doing thing like burning forests to make way for agriculture, and then metal making. I am guessing you would agree with a much faster impact then what I have described from archeology? We're looking at The Jetsons, K. Eric Drexler's Nanotechnology, Star Trek??

​I doubt a Quantum Computer would help much with faster than light travel so Star Trek is out, we'll just have to settle for more mundane things like immortality. A Protein's function is directly determined by its 3D shape, but even our largest supercomputers would take billions of years to calculate what shape a linear sequence of amino acids will fold into. And yet there must be a dramatically faster way to find that shape because we know the amino acid chain itself can do it in about a thousandth of a second, a Quantum Computer should be able to calculate it too. If we solved Protein Folding we'd know what shape a Protein should have to cure most diseases and we'd know what sequence of amino acids will produce that shape. And becoming masters of Protein machines would be a huge step toward full scale Drexler style Nanotechnology.

Unless, to mathematicians great surprise, it turns out that P = NP even a Quantum Computer won't be able to solve a NP complete problem in polynomial time, but there is no evidence even nature herself can do that. So such machines will give us godlike powers but nothing beyond that. We won't be able to crack NP complete

​ ​

problems

​ ​

but neither can God.

  John K Clark

 

[spudb...@aol.com]

Very good analysis-you should write a Kindle book on this, looking at ramifications, and such. The Protein Folding explanation, plus disease, seems alluring to probably everyone, hence an interesting immortality likelihood. The P=NP aspect may be something not existing in nature (unless we dive into Everett's MWI), so that's sort of a small loss to myself. As in mystical and transcendental, which in most cases means useless. P=NP was introduced to me years ago by list member professor Hans Moravec, in his book Robot, which I still think about fondly. Do you hold out any value in quantum resurrection via massive Qubit computing? I think I picked that one up, years ago, from Dr. Clifford Pickover at IBM, as a concept. For me, it seems to explain a 'how-to" if its possible to re-track past events and places and using some kind of scanner of our past, and re-create them. My imgaination tells me, roughly earth orbit sweeps round the Sun. Arthur C. Clarke (relation?) and Stephen Baxter, did it this way in The Light of Other Days, by harnessing a search engine to a wormhole. It was what Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin, a specious device to move the plot forward. Me, I hoping its true and doable.

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Jul 28, 2017 1:23 pm
Subject: Re: Robust topological quantum computing

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017, spudboy100 via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

​> ​

Do you hold out any value in quantum resurrection via massive Qubit computing? I think I picked that one up, years ago, from Dr. Clifford Pickover at IBM, as a concept.

I'm more familial with Frank Tipler's

​ 

1993

​ 

book "The Physics of Immortality". Back then I liked his book a lot because it was scientific, he

​ 

made a number of predictions and said that if even one of those predictions was wrong his entire theory could not work

​.​

 

​A​

nd Tipler's predictions turned out to be wrong, some spectacularly wrong. 

Tipler predicted the expansion of the universe would slow down, stop, then change direction and collapse in on itself

​ 

.

​ 

From the heat of that imploding fireball he thought a hyper-advanced civilization could extract an infinite amount of energy

​ 

and use that energy to perform a infinite number of calculations, not a very large number of them a infinite number of them.  We now know due to Dark Energy (which he did NOT predict) the expansion of the cosmos is accelerating not decelerating

​

,

​ 

so that fireball will never happen.

​And there were other errors. ​

Tipler 

​said 

the Higgs boson must be at 220GEV +- 20  but we now know it is 125.3GEV +- .5.   And Tipler

​ said

 ​

the Hubble constant must be less than or equal to 45, but it's 67.8 +- .77. 

​W​

e don't live in the sort of universe that Tipler thought we did. More than one of his predictions was wrong so if we take Tipler at his word his theory must be wrong.

​There are other ideas about how resurrection could happen and who knows maybe one of them is right, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. That's why I decided to get frozen to liquid Nitrogen temperatures when I shuffle off this mortal coil. That's a long shot too but if it doesn't work it won't make me any deader.
 

​> ​

Arthur C. Clarke (relation?)

​I'd love to be able to say I'm ​Arthur C. Clarke's illegitimate lovechild but as far I know we're unrelated.  My father's name was Arthur E. Clark (no e) not Arthur C. Clarke. At least that's what he told me his name was...Hmm

 John K Clark 

[spudb...@aol.com]

Ok Thanks. Yes, I am familiar with professor Tipler's books, including the one with astronomer, John Barrow, The Anthropic Cosmological; Principle. So maybe Daddy was a travelin' man? A plausible hypothesis. 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Jul 29, 2017 4:57 pm
Subject: Re: Robust topological quantum computing