Today, this column is more about science than technology. This is a very long article, so I will not attempt to summarize it.
Here, Michael A. Nielsen is not as interested by technological applications as he is by quantum information science, "a fundamental field that is opening up in response to a new way of comprehending the world."
Let him explain his purpose.
Quantum information science is new enough that researchers are still coming to grips with its very nature, and they disagree about which questions lie at its heart. This article presents my personal view that the central goal of quantum information science is to develop general principles, like the laws of entanglement, that will enable us to understand complexity in quantum systems.
And here is another small excerpt.
The key to seeing truly quantum behavior in a complex system is to isolate the system extremely well from the rest of the world, preventing decoherence and preserving fragile quantum states. This isolation is relatively easy to achieve with small systems, such as atoms suspended in a magnetic trap in a vacuum, but is much more difficult with the larger ones in which complex behavior may be found. Accidental laboratory discoveries of remarkable phenomena such as superconductivity and the quantum Hall effect are examples in which physicists have achieved large, well-isolated quantum systems. These phenomena demonstrate that the simple rules of quantum mechanics can give rise to emergent principles governing complex behaviors.
If you want to know more about quantum information science, this is a must-read article (please allow yourself some time, preferably in a quiet environment).
Finally, if you want to discover what are qubits (short for quantum bits), you'll find a separate explanation as well as a nice illustration in Qubits Explained.
Source: Michael A. Nielsen, Scientific American, October 15, 2002
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