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Champing at the bits

Philip Ball

Published Jan 1, 2006• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Despite some remaining hurdles, the mind-bending and frankly weird world of quantum computers is surprisingly close. Philip Ball finds out how these unusual machines will earn their keep.

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Setting the scene for a quantum marketplace

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As quantum computing makes its first forays from the lab to the real world, are the latest claims mere hype causing a bubble that will burst before the field finds its feet? Or are investors and researchers right to be enthusiastic about this burgeoning technological revolution? Philip Ball investigates the successes and pitfalls of commercializing quantum information technology.

Physics World•Dec 1, 2021•0 citations

Playing to the quantum beats

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Computers and digital technology are central to the modern music industry – but what could quantum computers bring to the party? Philip Ball tunes in to an avant-garde band of musicians and scientists who are exploring how quantum computing can be used to make and manipulate music.

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The quantum race

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With all the hype and excitement surrounding quantum computers, James McKenzie wonders when they will become mainstream products and what they will be useful for.

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Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different

Philip Ball

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world. Rather, we can now see that everything is quantum: our everyday world is simply what quantum becomes at the human scale. But if quantum mechanics is right, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seems obvious or right—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.

•Oct 18, 2018•12 citations

Quantum computer gets closer to reality

Physics Today•Jul 28, 2008•0 citations

Rudiments of reality

Philip Ball

Philip Ball reviews Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek

Physics World•May 1, 2021•0 citations
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world. Rather, we can now see that everything is quantum: our everyday world is simply what quantum becomes at the human scale. But if quantum mechanics is right, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seems obvious or right—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.