In 1981, Richard Feynman suggested that a quantum computer might be able to simulate the evolution of quantum systems much better than classical computers. Except for several proof-of-principle experiments, no working quantum computer has yet been built.
Source: ieee.org
That was the message of the Q Summit, a one-day meeting of quantum computing researchers, investors, and entrepreneurs hosted by IBM in Menlo Park, Calif., last week.
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Einstein’s objections to quantum mechanics began very early. Schrödinger’s version of the theory introduced a new mathematical entity, the wave function, which seemed to allow the position of an unmeasured particle to be spread out across an arbitrarily large region of space. When the particle’s position was measured, the wave function was said to ‘collapse’, suddenly becoming localised where the particle was detected.
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In 1935, when both quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity were young, a little-known Soviet physicist named Matvei Bronstein, just 28 himself, made the first detailed study of the problem of reconciling the two in a quantum theory of gravity. This “possible theory of the world as a whole,” as Bronstein called it, would supplant Einstein’s classical description of gravity, which casts it as curves in the space-time continuum, and rewrite it in the same quantum language as the rest of physics.
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