linkstream2 microblog

The strange link between the human mind & quantum physics
http://www.BBC.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics Wave packet collapse & decision making. A potential connection between #QuantumComputing & #Neuroscience

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“As a result, physicists are often embarrassed to even mention the words “quantum” and “consciousness” in the same sentence.

But setting that aside, the idea has a long history. Ever since the “observer effect” and the mind first insinuated themselves into quantum theory in the early days, it has been devilishly hard to kick them out. A few researchers think we might never manage to do so. …
One particularly puzzling question is how our conscious minds can experience unique sensations, such as the colour red or the smell of frying bacon. With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation and there is nothing in physics that tells us what it should be like.

Sensations like this are called “qualia”. We perceive them as unified properties of the outside world, but in fact they are products of our consciousness – and that is hard to explain. Indeed, in 1995 philosopher David Chalmers dubbed it “the hard problem” of
consciousness.
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This has prompted him to suggest that “we could make some progress on understanding the problem of the evolution of consciousness if we supposed that consciousnesses alters (albeit perhaps very slightly and subtly) quantum probabilities.””
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What to expect in ’18: science in the new year
https://www.Nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00009-5 Insights from cancer & ancient #genomes. Cures from #CRISPR. Progress in
#OpenAccess. Also, lots on outer space. But nothing on #cryoEM, #DeepLearning, #QuantumComputing or the brain connectome. HT @OBahcall

Computers That Can Run Backwards
https://www.AmericanScientist.org/article/computers-that-can-run-backwards Discusses the relationship between adiabatic, reversible & quantum #computing to energy expenditure per bit. Introduces Koomey’s law that “computations per unit of energy have been doubling about every 1.6 years.”

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Koomey’s law, a relative of Moore’s law, says that over the first 70 years of electronic computing (as represented above by typical computers of the time), computations per unit of energy have been doubling about every 1.6 years. Had this not been happening, each doubling of components would have doubled the heat to be dissipated and would have shut down Moore’s law long ago. Koomey’s law is also good news for mobile computing, which relies heavily on battery power.”
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“Based just down the road from Yale in New Haven, Conn., and backed by $18 million in funding from the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and others, the start-up is another sign that quantum computing — for decades a distant dream of the world’s computer scientists — is edging closer to reality.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/technology/quantum-computing-research.html

Chemistry is quantum computing’s killer app
https://CEN.acs.org/articles/95/i43/Chemistry-quantum-computings-killer-app.html Solving for orbital configurations may be the most natural use of entanglement #QuantumComputing