Something Spooky This Way Comes

Aspects of quantum mechanics can seem strange, even to physicists such as Einstein, who said that entanglement is “spooky action at a distance”.

If quantum mechanics had a holiday, it might be a spooky one, like halloween, a holiday full of cats.

Cats and quantum mechanics go together, and we can blame Schrödinger, a physicist who corresponded with Einstein and explained physics using a cat as an example.

Einstein also had a friend named Bohr, and he didn’t have a cat, but he may have had a bat. It may not be probable, but it may be possible.

But the first physicist, Sir Isaac Newton, would have none of this talk of cats and potential bats.

For Newton, if a .2 kilogram apple fell from a tree, he wouldn’t say it was “probably” accelerating at 9.8 meters per second, he would say that it was accelerating at 9.8 meters per second.

Newton’s world of physics was deterministic. Something either was, or was not. An atom was like a planet, with little electrons spinning around it, and in a deterministic world, the position could be measured and known.

But Einstein and Schrödinger and a pack of other troublesome physicists came along later and disrupted this deterministic view of the world that came from Newton.

Newton’s classical view of the world is still deeply embedded in our society and thinking, but the rebellious quantum mechanics has been creeping up on it.

Newtonian classical thinking is like classical music, and quantum thinking is like rock n roll, with a bit of additional strangeness thrown in.

Quantum thinking: Things may not be quite as you think they are. There’s more than meets the eye. There are other worlds than this.

Newton thought you could describe an apple falling to the ground by determining the mass of the apple and the effect of the gravitational pull of the earth. Big object attracts little object.

But then Einstein came along and said, “sorry not so fast”. He and others showed how gravity actually comes from bending the fabric of space time. What the heck does that even mean?

It means that in quantum mechanics, there are some strange things out there, but in order to get a better understanding of how things work, there is a need for quantum thinking, vs classical thinking.

Most people grow up attending school and learning classical thinking, and it is deeply ingrained. But in order to see the universe better, we need to set aside classical thinking and put on some rock and roll quantum thinking.

Once you’ve got your quantum groove on, then understanding things like entanglement is a little easier. But if someone like Einstein says it is spooky, then it is still spooky.

Entanglement is a strong connection that exists between quantum particles, such as qubits.

Qubits are a good starting point for understanding entanglement.

And to understand qubits, it’s good to start with plain old bits. Bits is bits.

Einstein and his spooky quantum pals showed us that the world you can see and the unseen world of atoms are both probabilistic. And this kind of thinking paved the way for quantum computers to come to life.

But when computers first came along, they were still based on classical physics, and classical thinking.

Classical physicists contributed to the discoveries that led to classical computers, and the basic deterministic measurement unit, the bit: 0 or 1. You can measure it, you can determine it. 0, or 1.

This classical way of developing computers is similar to the classical way of thinking about atoms. The classical view is that a tiny electron orbits around a neutron, and that you can measure it, and determine it. This is deterministic.

But more recent rebellious physicists came along and challenged the status quo. They found that atoms and their interior relationships are not deterministic; they are actually probabilistic. The reality is that you can’t measure the atom exactly; but only in terms of probability. The electron is probably in a certain position.

This new quantum view blew fuses in a lot of minds and sounded outlandish, but math was the language that proved the point.

This quantum thinking was crazy, and yet very sane, and it set in motion a chain of discoveries that have unfolded over the last century, like lightning, leaping from mind to mind, through research papers and experiments.

Meanwhile . . . computers were still stuck in classical mode, using the on and off bit, that was 0 or 1. They could do a lot, but only so much.

For awhile, the bit has enjoyed the spotlight. 8 bits became a byte, a thousand bytes are a megabyte, a thousand megabytes are a gigabyte, and then smartphones came along and people wanted more and more gigabytes.

But then the rebels started applying quantum physics to computers, and got their spooky groove on. They began to wonder if there was more to digital information than just plain old bits.

They said to themselves, if the computers of today were based on classical physics, and the future is quantum physics, then maybe the computers of tomorrow would be quantum computers. So they considered the classical bit, and wondered if there could be a quantum bit.

The answer is, yes indeed, there can be quantum bits. Spooky for sure. A little strange and even challenging to wrap our heads around. But this is partly because our minds are so influenced by classical thinking.

So to really understand the quantum bit, you have to get your quantum groove on. Embrace the strange and it can become more familiar. You can think of it as science fiction that is becoming fact.

Thus originally there was the classical bit, and then the quantum bit came along. The bit is 1 or 0, on or off, like a light switch.

And the qubit is like a switch you use to dim the lights, one that has many positions. Maybe it is fair to say that a light dimmer is like a quantum switch.

With the qubit, it is a similar situation. It is a quantum particle. And they have been figuring out how to go beyond the classical bit by using atomic particles to calculate and store information. At first it was theoretical, and now it is becoming actual.

It is pretty strange stuff, but this quantum particle opens up new worlds for computers, making them much more powerful and faster for certain kinds of calculations.

Not surprisingly quantum computers are good at some very complex problems where there are many interconnected potential decisions: like trying to figure out the best way to run a supply chain and get part z from point a to point b and all the other thousands of parts, put them together, and ship them out.

Ultimately, the new world of quantum computers is opened up by the qubit, a quantum particle. And the qubit is also a basis for the spooky world of entanglement.

Next: Entanglement