back to article Noisy qubits destroy data in order to save it

Scientists from NIST and the University of Copenhagen have persuaded a handful of atoms to get into a tangle by shedding their heat into the outside world. What's odd about this – if there's anything in the world of quantum computing that can't be described as “odd” – is that in doing so, their qubits were leaking information …

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  1. Forget It

    For the snark was a boojum, you see

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      No, it was a superposition of an up and down boojum, and then someone applied an operator on it.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
        Coat

        Nah, it was a screen clipping of the upcoming Star Was film, with a spaceship approaching a Saturn-type planet, no doubt to land on some orbital station off-camera.

        You're not pulling the wool over my eyes !

  2. Jeffrey Nonken
    Boffin

    Destroying data in order to save it?

    Been there, done that. See "core memory".

  3. Dave Horn

    >> Typically, NIST explains, quantum entanglement experiments do whatever they can to avoid

    >> noise, because noise can destroy entangled states (or, The Register supposes, can make

    >> it impossible to measure the entangled state, but don't hold us to this).

    Noise would effectively perform an independent, random, measurement on the system, making the carefully designed one you were about to do to pointless. The measurement both simultaneously performs the calculation and reveals the result, so in the "noisy" case, there is no entangled state to measure at all.

  4. phear46

    Im literally sat reading this like 'huh!?' (im going to blame the lack if coffee so far)

    I hope I'm not the only one.....

    1. Measurer
      Thumb Up

      Err...

      No, you're not

      AND

      Yes, you are, simultaneously.

  5. Martin Huizing

    Reminds me of this somehow;

    Infinite nr. of monkeys typing away on same amount of typewriters.

    I wonder why Christians aren't up on arms on this instead of stem cell research.

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Coat

      Re: Reminds me of this somehow;

      Infinite nr. of monkeys ...I wonder why Christians aren't up on arms...

      Monkeys hit too close to home.

      Mine's the one with Clarence Darrow on the label.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Martin Re: Reminds me of this somehow;

      I think the Christian objection to some forms of stem cell research is around the creation of embryos which have their stem cells taken and are then destroyed/killed. The argument, I believe, turns around when a living being becomes a living being having a right to not be killed.

      While people have differing opinions on the above I have never heard of any Christian group who object to quantum mechanics, in fact many seem to see it as an exciting secret God has put there for them to discover. It seems fair to say that this line of thinking applies to several other religions as well.

      The whole "you can't believe in science and religion" idea seems to be based on ignorance.

      1. beep54

        Re: @Martin Reminds me of this somehow;

        "While people have differing opinions on the above I have never heard of any Christian group who object to quantum mechanics..."

        Give them time. Apparently some groups have finally started to grasp some of Cantor's theories of infinity and found that they do not, nosiree, like that at ALL! Different sizes of infinity?? Bah! Humbug!!

  6. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    >>The whole "you can't believe in science and religion" idea seems to be based on ignorance.

    ... silly me! I thought it was based primarily on the mistaken idea that there was a deity and secondly that science isn't a belief system ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ......and there we have a good example of that ignorance.

    2. t.est

      Science even prove you wrong on that last statement. Scientists pursue their theses, even when science shows that it can't be so. One example is the search for life on Mars with our probes. We know enough to say that Mars is and has been lifeless. No need to send any probes looking for life, just waste of money and resources. Note, I'm not against missions to outer space, I just don't like it when they waste their time on futile tasks. They should know better than that.

      We all believe in something, and many are willing to fight for their beliefs, just look at Richard Dawkins. He has a religious belief in that science will show that there exist no God. He is probably much excited about the tasks the probes to mars have been given.

      Most of the atheists commenting here believes in the evolution theory, even to the point that they dismiss part's of the evolution theory, e.g. on the subject of adaptation while discussing with a theist.

      Quite often the atheist says adaptation is not random, though the evolution theory in it's current state says adaptation comes through random mutations, where one in thousands/millions/billion/whatever mutations happens to be beneficial. Then natural selection after that would do it's work.

      Last time I had this discussion here quite a few rejected the idea of random events that would lead to adaptation. In fact by doing so giving their God the name "the evolution theory". It's a religious behaviour, not one based on science or reason. They simply said it's not based on random events, but it's adaptation.

      Now an adaptation not based on random mutations, would be an adaptation to either be based on a "mind" (note the citation marks) of the creature of itself to adapt to a certain situation, or be based on a pre programmed code for adaptation by a creator.

      Both of those statements are contrary to the evolution theory itself, so an atheist who does not acknowledge this part of the evolution theory is simply religious in his belief, though he's an atheist.

      Religion is not necessarily equal to a belief in a God or Gods.

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