How QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY is going to change our lives? | Basics behind QUANTUM INTERNET| “Spooky action at distance” (PART-1)
This article will help the reader to understand the basics behind “QUANTUM COMPUTING” & its potential impact on our daily lives. Most of us had already heard about this fancy term “QUANTUM COMPUTING” but couldn’t understand its vitality & how it has the potential to change our lives for better. Since, its impossible to cover such information & data in one article, this article is the part-1 of series of articles on QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY. I would refrain from using big technical words in this series, keeping in mind that the article covers the topic comprehensively & in a lucid language.
Before we begin talking about QUANTUM COMPUTING, we need to understand some BASICS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS to understand the aforementioned topic efficiently. Let us go step by step understanding from scratch.
Beginning of QUANTUM MECHANICS & QT 1.0
Quantum Mechanics is the science of the very small particles.
It explains the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.
Our understanding of Quantum Mechanics started in the beginning of the 20th century.
At the “Solvay International Conference” on “Electrons and Photons”, organized in 1927 in Brussels, 29 prominent physicists discussed the basics of quantum theory and laid the foundation for today’s quantum mechanics. Seventeen of them already were, or would become, Nobel Prize winners. Amongst them were Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Max Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Paul Dirac, De-Broglie and Niels Bohr.
Many technologies we use in modern life could be invented because of our understanding of quantum mechanics: lasers, MRI scanners, nuclear energy and transistors, to name a few. Quantum mechanics helped us to understand and manipulate semiconductors, the key enabler for the transistor, meaning that computers, tablets and smartphones all exist because we know how to make use of the effects of quantum mechanics. This existing technology where we use QM (Quantum Mechanics) in our daily lives is known as QT 1.0 (QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY 1.0)
FUN FACT : From May 2019, the definition of the kilogram is described by the laws of quantum mechanics.
Now, there will no longer be special institutes that own the truth about the kilogram. It will be owned by everyone, described in a formula.
QUANTUM REVOLUTION & QT 2.0
“WE ARE LIVING AT THE BEGINNING OF QUANTUM REVOLUTION”
We are entering an era that is referred as QT (Quantum Technology) 2.0. Not only are we able to understand the effects of quantum mechanics, we are now also able to actively manipulate individual particles at a quantum level and read out their states in a single shot. This allows us to develop quantum technologies that will enable new applications, spark many new businesses, and may help us solve some of the world’s challenges. Undoubtedly, this is the future-proof technology that has a lot of scope and challenges.
Briefly QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES are divided into 4 main categories :
- QUANTUM COMMUNICATION
- QUANTUM COMPUTATION
- QUANTUM SIMULATION
- QUANTUM SENSING & METROLOGY
All are actually related to each other, but in this series we are going to mainly focus on QUANTUM COMMUNICATION which includes various revolutionary technologies such as : QUANTUM TELEPORTATION, QUANTUM INTERNET, QUANTUM KEY DISTRIBUTION etc.
BASICS to understand QUANTUM COMPUTING & INTERNET & QuBits
In our everyday lives we experience the world according to the rules of classical mechanics. However, at much smaller scales, the scales of atoms and electrons, we enter a world where different rules apply: the rules of quantum mechanics. Since we don’t experience this in our everyday lives, it’s really hard to imagine quantum mechanics. To understand the working of a quantum internet, you have
to understand the three ways in which quantum mechanics, at its core, differs from classical physics. These three concepts are
- Quantum Superposition.
- Measurement.
- Entanglement.
Before diving straight into the 3 concepts of QM, its important to know the building blocks of a quantum internet are QUANTUM BITS, or QuBits.
Qubits can be compared to classical bits, except that qubits work according to above mentioned, three concepts of quantum mechanics. We represent a qubit as a sphere that has value 0 on the north pole and value 1 on the south pole. While a classical bit can only take value 0 or value 1, a qubit can have any value on this sphere. This brings us to the concept of superposition: a qubit can take the value of 0 and 1 at the same time!
1. QUANTUM SUPERPOSITION
The first concept is quantum superposition: in quantum mechanics, objects are allowed to be in two places at the same time. This is a strange concept, but the fact that things can be in two places at the same time is something that you just have to accept: “if it were not true, every atom in every object on the earth would collapse into itself on a time scale of a few picoseconds”.
The fact that the matter we are made of is stable, was one of the most spectacular predictions of quantum mechanics.
We don’t experience super-position in our daily life: for us, an object is never in two places at the same time.
Analogy : To get a feeling of what superposition means, imagine spinning a coin on its side. If you look from above to the spinning coin, you can see both sides of the coin: it is like the coin is both heads as well as tails in that specific moment in time, just like a qubit can be in two states at the same time.
2. MEASUREMENT
The second strange thing about quantum mechanics is what happens when you look: in classical mechanics, looking at something does not change the ‘state’ of that thing. If you look at a car driving down the road, the car is still driving down the road after you have looked at it. This, it turns out, is different in quantum mechanics. If you look at a quantum superposition of an object — the object is in two places at the same time — the object itself will ‘jump’ to one position or the other. The fact that you have acquired knowledge about the object has changed its state.
Analogy : In the analogy of the spinning coin, you can compare this looking at the coin to slapping the spinning coin on the table: the coin is forced to choose a side. This second ‘strange’ property of quantum mechanics has been confirmed by decades of experiments.
3. ENTANGLEMENT
The third concept is that of entanglement: two qubits can have an extremely strong connection. If two qubits are entangled, and both qubits are measured, the outcome for each qubit will look random. But, once you compare the outcomes, you find that they match up in ways that are simply impossible to achieve with classical bits. The outcomes can only be explained if the measurement on one qubit has somehow influenced the other qubit.
This is what referred as “SPOOKY ACTION AT DISTANCE” by ALBERT EINSTEIN. If a great physicist like him was reluctant to accept QM, then If we you are not getting the concept quite well that’s perfectly “octostatic”.
Analogy : This entanglement remains in existence when the two qubits are sent far apart. Say, one qubit is sent from Delhi to Bangalore, and the other from Delhi to Mumbai. A measurement then taken on the Bangalore qubit immediately influences the Mumbai qubit. Returning to the analogy of entanglement of two spinning coins means that if you repeatedly spin and slap both coins on the table, you will find ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ in combinations that are impossible, unless the coins have immediate interaction with each other, even while one is in Bangalore and the other in Mumbai.
Now, at this point, you have all the knowledge you need to understand QUANTUM INTERNET but before describing QUANTUM INTERNET, Lets just have a quick review, why we need QUANTUM INTERNET, when we already have CLASSICAL INTERNET (the Internet we have right now).
CLASSICAL vs QUANTUM INTERNET
3 Question needs to be answered :
Q1 : Why do we actually want to build a quantum internet?
Q2 : Apart from the fact that the process teaches us new physics, will a quantum internet have added value over the classical internet — the internet that we are currently all using?
Q3 : What are the differences and similarities between the classical and quantum internet?
This part is of article is going to be little bit technical, so if you want, you can skip this one.
Let me give you a quick view, “how classical internet work over classical network?”
If you send digital information over the classical internet, this information is built up of bits. A bit can take two values: we call them 0 or 1.
For example, we can send the following digital information from our computer to another computer by using the classical internet:
01001001
01101110
01110100
01100101
01110010
01101110
01100101
01110100
And while for us this looks like a random bunch of 0 and 1’s, a computer knows that, in a kind of encoding called ASCII, we’ve actually sent over a word — namely the word ‘Internet’.
INTERNET is just a vast network that connects computers all over the word. First Network was built in USA by MIT scientist : ARPANET in 1968–69, which provides better & secure connection as compared to telephonic networks of that time (Security was needed against Soviet Attack).
FUN FACT : At the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), they typed an “L”. And in Stanford University an “L” appeared on the screen. Afterwards at UCLA the letter “O” was sent. In Stanford, they could now see “LO” on the screen. The third letter, “G”, crashed the system.
2 main benefits of QUANTUM INTERNET against CLASSICAL INTERNET are:
- 🔐SECURITY (QKD — Quantum Key Distribution)
- 🚅SPEED (Exceeds speed of light)
Now, if your question is why better speed & security, then its a lot of technical work to grasp. If any reader interested, One can read from the link below:
Let us end this article here only, since we have covered enough for a single article.
In the next part of series (which will be coming soon), we will finally going to explore STAGES OF QUANTUM NETWORK, QUANTUM TELEPORTATION & APPLICATIONS OF QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY.
Thank You for reading this article.
I hope, the reader has utilized his/her time by reading this article and added some more value to their knowledge.
🇮🇳JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT🇮🇳
