Quantum Frontiers

We can model many "reality" with the classical methods good enough, using Deep Learning and Tensor Network based methods, see for instance - https://quantumfrontiers.com/author/roundsphereblog/ - https://www.quantamagazine.org/key-chemistry-question-answered-no-quan… When it comes to many of these systems relevant real world (e.g. quantum chemistry), classical heuristic-based approaches are already successful enough. For instance, you can run one of the simulations in Garnet Chan paper in a 10-15 minutes using some machine similar to DGX Spark to simulate FeMo-cofactor model within accepted quantum chemistry precisions. I believe its biggest application will be to explore some areas in quantum information (e.g. quantum coherence), all the practical applications will be minor.

The piece[1] from John Preskill linked in the article has less fluff and is more informative, IMO. Given Preskill is director of the IQIM, and Fisher is on its faculty, he may have a promotional agenda; but he has an impressive pedigree[2] - I don't have the knowledge to directly evaluate the hypothesis myself, but if Preskill considers it worth investigating, I'd refrain from betting that it's nonsense! 1: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2015/11/06/wouldnt-you-like-to-know-whats… 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Preskill

Without getting into what Al Gore may have said or meant, let me quote the following lovely little tidbit from Paul Ginsparg (who created arxiv.org). It's about physicist Ken Wilson, but Al Gore and Newt Gingrich make a fascinating appearance: "He [Wilson] was on the NSF taskforce that pushed for the implementation of the early NSFNet, and I was told by George Strawn (one of the people on the NSF side shepherding the process) that Ken was the key person who argued for using the TCP/IP (i.e., internet) protocol, rather than the DECnet protocol favored by many of the other physicists, and we know where that has led… (George also told me that the absolutely essential people who moved the NSFNet through the senate and house, respectively, were … Al Gore, Jr and Newt Gingrich)" http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/06/18/we-are-all-wilsonians-now/comme…

> Physics has not changed much What time frame are we talking here? We're constantly learning about how more stuff works. Physics has had plenty of changes[1] but perhaps you're only speaking to very specific theories that have not changed such as relativity? In which case yeah it hasn't changed much but there is also a disconnect between relativity and quantum mechanics and it seems a pretty large majority of scientists think there is a unified way to make them one theory so obviously our understand of both is not entirely accurate (though our observations with relativity are pretty spot on). > Where do you go from there? Hard to say since I'm not a physicist or hardware engineer but I've seen lots of interesting talks about scaling down more and more when we didn't think we could before. Ultimately there may be a size in which we can't get any smaller with conventional processor architecture but that doesn't mean we can't build new ones. Optical based processors, built in a 3D way, allows for far more overlap than transistors since light passing through each other doesn't interfere with one another[2] so that looks really interesting. Quantum computing also promises great speed increases which perhaps could eventually be scaled down to closer to quantum sizes than traditional computing. I think everything is getting much harder than the breakthrough before it but we seem to keep going and I would be surprised if we end up completely stopped due to hitting some physics…

The linked document is a copy edited version of a 3 part blog post series which you can read here: 1) https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/01/06/has-quantum-advantage-been-ach… 2) https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/01/25/has-quantum-advantage-been-ach… 3) https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/02/28/what-is-next-in-quantum-advant…

What do you mean? The original 2019 supremacy experiment was eventually simulated, as better classical methods were found, but the followups are still holding strong (for example [4] and [5]). There was recently a series of blog posts by Dominik Hangleiter summarizing the situation: [1][2][3]. [1]: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/01/06/has-quantum-advantage-been-ach… [2]: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/01/25/has-quantum-advantage-been-ach… [3]: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2026/02/28/what-is-next-in-quantum-advant… [4]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.04792 [5]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02501

Not for photonic quantum computing. Only detectors require cooling, and it is possible to build adequately sized quantum computers with constant number of detectors using loop based architectures. Even more realistic architectures are very very cost effective on the number of components https://quantumfrontiers.com/2023/06/21/what-is-the-logical-gate-speed…

Everybody knows Feynman, who knows Jaynes? https://quantumfrontiers.com/2018/12/23/chasing-ed-jayness-ghost/ Jaynes about Probability in Science: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/theoretical-phy…

A more technical, but imo very good, blog post explaining this result can be found here: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2020/03/01/the-shape-of-mip-re/

No. One of the authors talked about this point - among others - here: https://quantumfrontiers.com/2020/03/01/the-shape-of-mip-re/ "MIP* = RE shows that, with quantum entanglement, there can be a chasm of computability between verifying solutions and finding them."

Can anyone with a background in quantum information theory tell me how QI models the distinction between a quantum system being measured or unitarily evolved? Nicole Yunger Halpern talks about these things as if the measurement process were a well-defined thing happening at a specific instant in time. How and what do quantum information theorists think about the measurement problem these days? On another note, having read John Preskill's article (https://quantumfrontiers.com/2015/11/06/wouldnt-you-like-to-know-whats… on the whole topic, including his reference to the zebrafish (https://www.nature.com/news/flashing-fish-brains-filmed-in-action-1.12… Assuming that quantum mechanics does influence cognition as proposed by Matthew Fisher, wouldn't mapping the (zebrafish's) brain then influence how it works?

Some more background from John Preskill: "The idea that quantum effects could have an important role in brain function is not new, but is routinely dismissed as wildly implausible. Matthew Fisher begs to differ. And those who read his paper (as I hope many will) are bound to conclude: This old guy’s not so crazy. He may be onto something. At least he’s raising some very interesting questions." https://quantumfrontiers.com/2015/11/06/wouldnt-you-like-to-know-whats…

...they have, if you believe this (fairly convincing!) set of evidence showing perfect Andreev Reflection (robust to changes in gate potential), which should only be possible (in a way robust to changes in gate potential) in the presence of Majorana states (i.e. a type of non-abelian anyon): https://quantumfrontiers.com/2017/11/21/majorana-update/

A comment on the idea by John Preskill: http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/06/07/entanglement-wormholes/