Top 3 Quantum Myths and Misconceptions
Originally published at www.amarchenkova.com on January 24, 2015.
Quantum mechanics is hard. No one is debating that. But there are a lot of bad facts out there just because the metaphors used were not explained well. Let’s debunk myths and explain some misconceptions.
“QUANTUM COMPUTERS ARE USEFUL BECAUSE THEY CAN CHECK ALL POSSIBILITIES AT ONCE”
No. That’s not how that works. Where did this explanation come from?
More than fifty quantum algorithms have been discovered. Each quantum algorithm works differently, but none of them work by checking all possibilities at once. If that was true, all quantum algorithms would be the same and quantum computers could speed up any problem, which is not true.
The most common time you will hear this myth is when breaking RSA encryption on a quantum computer is discussed. This is how it really works:
The quantum algorithm, Shor’s, run on a quantum computer doesn’t try checking each prime factor directly. There is one quantum step that makes finding the prime factors much easier; it concentrates on finding the period of a function which contains the RSA key and classically computes the greatest common divisor. (Interested in reading more? Here’s an article I wrote…
