{"id":171934,"date":"2023-09-13T17:22:52","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T22:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/how-tiny-schrodingers-cats-could-upend-quantum-again"},"modified":"2023-09-13T17:22:52","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T22:22:52","slug":"how-tiny-schrodingers-cats-could-upend-quantum-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/how-tiny-schrodingers-cats-could-upend-quantum-again","title":{"rendered":"How Tiny Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s Cats Could Upend Quantum Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The building blocks of quantum computers are often thought to imitate the famous thought experiment known as Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s cat, in which quantum physics essentially suspends a cat in a box in a nebulous state between life and death: The cat only definitely becomes alive or dead when someone looks in the box. Now, by mimicking Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s cats as closely as possible, a French startup reveals it could help make extraordinarily powerful quantum computers a reality sooner than previously thought\u2014a strategy <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/amazon\" class=\"\">Amazon<\/a> is also pursuing.<\/p>\n<p>Classical computers generally switch transistors either on or off to symbolize data as ones or zeroes. In contrast, quantum computers use quantum bits\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/silicon-spin-qubits\" target=\"_self\" class=\"\">qubits <\/a>\u2014that, because of the surreal nature of quantum physics, can exist in a state of superposition where they are both 1 and 0 at the same time. This essentially lets each qubit carry out two calculations simultaneously. The more qubits are quantum-mechanically linked, or <a data-linked-post=\"2657446195\" href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/what-is-quantum-entanglement\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">entangled<\/a>, the more calculations they can perform at once, to an exponential degree.<\/p>\n<p>The new strategy depends on so-called \u201ccat states,\u201d pairs of very different quantum states as diametrically opposed to one another as the \u201calive\u201d and \u201cdead\u201d feline once famously postulated by Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The building blocks of quantum computers are often thought to imitate the famous thought experiment known as Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s cat, in which quantum physics essentially suspends a cat in a box in a nebulous state between life and death: The cat only definitely becomes alive or dead when someone looks in the box. Now, by mimicking [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}