QUANTUM LEAP
7 10 2005Talking or thinking about anything quantum tends to make my brain hurt, but when I read this story on Wired I thought I’d put forth a better effort in understanding quantum mechanics.
It’s easier to wrap your brain around it if you know and understand the definition of the words. Quantum is the smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently. Quantum mechanics deals with the theory of matter that is based on elementary particles having wave properties. Combine these two concepts and you can build a quantum computer.
Quantum computers are a thing of theory, but physicists in Australia have made a big leap into making it a reality. They have found a way to store information in a laser beam. The scientist slowed the laser light from 300,000 kilometers per second to several hundred meters per second. This allowed them to then load information onto the light using photons. Photons have a spin which gives them a natural orientation. They can be oriented to be facing up or down and this represents a one or a zero.
The scientists used a crystal made of silicate and praseodymium, a rare earth element, to slow down the light. The light beam is fired at the crystal where it becomes absorbed. Then a second light pulse is fired again at the crystal to release the first beam containing the qubits of information.
Just think of the possibilities! One day you may be able to store your blog on a laser beam of light and shoot it across the galaxy. You’ll have intergalactic blog readers. How cool is that?!?
I’m envisioning aliens reading the crap I write on my blog. They’ll assume I am a lesser life form for sure. (Can you now explain the premise of the TV show Quantum Leap? I’ve never watched it before).
I don’t think I ever saw the very first episode of Quantum Leap. All I know is that he was doing a lab experiment that went wrong. Maybe he had found a way to travel on a laser beam, but instead of moving him from one place to another, it moved him from one time to another.
Chris is actually the Quantum Leap expert. He’s seen them all.
It cracks me up that Chris knows Quantum Leap. There was a dude in my high school who we teased relentlessly because he believed Quantum Leap was real. Maybe he’s one of the people on the Austrialian science team!
That is very cool. But it did make my brain hurt a little. Surprisingly, I think I still understood the gist of it. Thanks for explaining it for us non-science-minded people.
Laser blogs? You’d better include a warning:
BLOG RADIATION: AVOID DIRECT EYE EXPOSURE