Nunug

Topic: Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation

Presenter: Bruce Nielson

Date: Thursday, January 12, 2017

Time: 7:00:00 PM -

Location:

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard the phrases ‘quantum mechanics’ and ‘quantum computers’ so often by now that you’ve started to wonder what’s true and what’s false about it. Quantum Mechanics is widely believed to be so ‘weird’ that all you have to do today is throw the word ‘quantum’ in front of any sort of mysticism and – voila! you’ve got instant seeming scientific respectability. Even respectable scientists and Nobel Laureates cite quantum mechanics as a possible explanation for anything from consciousness to ESP. And there are now so many misunderstandings about quantum mechanics – often coming from very respectable scientists – that getting to the bottom of it all seems difficult to impossible.

Quantum Mechanics and Computation is a very difficult subject that can’t possibly be covered in depth in a single presentation, but this presentation will help you gain enough intuition for these subjects that you can better sort fact from fiction. What can we really do with quantum computers that we can’t do with a regular computer? Can it really speed up computation to the degree the media claims? Will it be a major breakthrough that changes the face of computing forever? Or is it all just hype? Why do we believe it will work when we’ve never really built one yet?

And more importantly, how and why does it work at all?

About the presenter: