By: Joshua Kilpatrick (Competition & Markets Authority)
Advances on the quantum frontier
Many people have thought the world behaves in strange ways lately. But few realize that, the smaller you go, the weirder things get. When we reach the level of subatomic particles, these small pieces of matter will behave and play with one another in ways we could never find in day-to-day life. At this scale particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously, or become entangled and behave as a single object, despite being separated at opposite ends of the galaxy.
While these properties are surprising for our mundane experience, quantum physics hold the promise of transforming various industries and unleashing vast computational powers that would leave even our fastest supercomputers today choking in the dust. The benefits, to our economy and our society, would be nearly unimaginable, from optimizing investment portfolios and perfecting logistical planning to accelerating breakthroughs in medical and pharmaceutical research. Learning how to harness these quantum behaviours could lead to entirely new ways of communicating in more secure ways. However, these technologies also have a dark side, as they could easily break our existing cryptography and security measures and require a major revolution in how we handle and think about securing our data…
