The legacy of human can be carried on through history only by passing on through stories and tales. These legends were passed down generations only because of the possibility of it being written down somewhere. The habit of writing down stories is one of the forms of storing data for humans. At first the human beings used stones and drawings to note down their lifestyle. Soon with the advancement of human civilization, humans moved to papers and ink that helped in storing their manuscripts in a much more efficient way rather than collecting a pile of stones. As the humans progressed into their golden era the need for storing these achievements in a systematic and an efficient way became a basic necessity. With the increasing data, the only issue was not just the storage but even able to access it or modify it immediately. Soon with the inventions of computers this problem seemed to arrive at an end but with the rapid progress of human civilization in the past couple of years puts today’s computers to shame. There is a requirement for something better, faster, more intelligent, and highly reliable. To tackle all these problems engineers, researchers, mathematicians, and physicists have come together to create a new type of computer called the quantum computer. These computers don’t only provide the answers to be able to solve large amount of data but rather work at speeds that are comparable to nearly 100 million times faster than any computer during the early 21st century. The rapid technological advancement of human race as predicted by science fiction films such as Minority Report reassures the relive that the existence of quantum computers would not just be a myth. The technology shown in the movie, Minority Report, requires a very powerful machine to be able to process the images that are provided by the precogs. But as the famous quote from Spiderman goes, “With great power comes great responsibility”, this applies to even the use of quantum computers, wherein these machines have such great power that if they are guided on the wrong path then they can manipulate the whole human era.
Computers are a very unique machine, they are defined as, “a device that can be instructed to carry out arbitrary sequences of arithmetic or logical operations automatically” . These exclusive machines were created to make human life easier by providing solutions to difficult and time consuming problems within seconds by using certain logical steps that are hardcoded into it through programs. Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations. Early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then. The introductory computers were analog machines that were limited only to simple mathematical calculations and decrypting messages by providing a key to the machine. By the 1950s the success of digital computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines.
Soon with high investment in the field of digital computers, there was a rapid development in this field. The US government developed the first programmable computer called the ENIAC(Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine.The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. People were intrigued by this advancement and wanted to make it even more efficient than it already was. This led onto the development of modern computers.The great advancement in computing power came with the advent of the integrated circuit. This new development heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers and led to the invention of the microprocessor. The requirement for a faster computer was increasing exponentially as people started understanding the capacity of these beautiful machines. With growth in the field of mathematics and physics at the same time, there was an establishment of a new type of computers called the quantum computers.
The quantum computers have a huge amount of proficiency. The need for a quantum computer is because it promises tremendous computing power enough to help us solve some really tough mathematical problems that are holding back our progress in a number of fields. Another reason for the necessity for the development of a quantum computing is the optimizing space. Since, the humans are running out of space and there is a dire need for developing things that can provide high amount of output using the least resources.
The underlying principle of a quantum computing is the use of quantum bits instead of the usual binary bits, 0’s and 1’s. The difference between quantum bits and binary bits is that the traditional bits can have only one of the following state either it is true(1) or it is false(0) whereas, a quantum bit can exist in a superposition of the two bits, that is, it can exists in both the states of 0 and 1 at the same time. Thus the advantage of this system is that at any given time a normal computer can only do one calculation in its time cycle whereas, with the advanced ability of a quantum computer of existing in 0 or 1 or more importantly 0 and 1, gives it an ability to carry out two operations at the same time. If this trend carries on then two qubits can do four instructions at the same time, three qubits can do eight instructions at the same time. Hence, the speed growth of the machine is exponential, 2n, where in ‘n’ is the number of qubits and the exponent factor gives the number of instructions that can be carried out in a time cycle of a quantum computer. With this growth in speed of computers numerous problems can be tackled but at the same time new problems — most importantly ethical boundaries of a quantum computing. Quantum computers unknowingly or knowingly form the basis of many science fiction films.
Two such examples of films are Minority Report(Dir: Spielberg, 2002) and I,Robot(Dir:Proyas, 2004). In Minority Report, we see how precogs have the ability to predict the future and that is displayed as third person visuals to the officers. The officers in the pre-crime department can play along with the visual, transport data by just tapping a glass card on the screen, or create 3-dimensional hologram at real time without any lag. All the technologies require a high processing power unit that can provide such ease in technology. It is feasible to accept the fact that if technology as predicting future is available in the year 2054, then the whole computer system of pre-crime works on quantum computers. There is also an evidence when a person goes to the shopping centre then there is a virtual holographic assistant that is able to recognise each and everyone by a retina scan. This high speed operations can be credited to only the possibility of quantum computers. Another example of a film highly replying on the power of quantum computing is I,Robot.
In the movie I,Robot all the robots are centrally connected to Viki, the artificial intelligent system that provides updates to all the robots in the city. Keep a track of functioning of all robots. She is even responsible for the security of the whole US Robotics building which requires a lot of computational power. All these operations in the time frame shown in the movie are only possible with the use of quantum computers. Hence, even if a science fiction film does not specifically shows the use quantum computer, nearly most of them are highly dependent on the technology of quantum computing. The field of quantum computing is still very young at the current time and this makes it most talked about topic and many companies are investing heavily in the field of the quantum computing.
The fields where quantum computing is highly used are cryptography, is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages; various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation are central to modern cryptography and molecular dynamics, drug design, and materials.
In cryptography, the text is replaced by another letters by using a specific key length. For example, if we want to encrypt the word ‘hello’ with an index number of three then the encrypted word is ‘khoor’. So it is relatively easy to decrypt the message if index number is less than the number of the length of the word to decrypt by using letter frequency analysis. If the index number is random with unlimited length, we would call it a one-time pad, with security that is absolutely guaranteed and proven. In fact, the most difficult part of this method is safely transmitting and storing the index numbers. However, the idea of a one-time pad is easier than the above on a quantum machine. A quantum machine can create an index number secretly and guarantee eavesdropper detection prevention. The problem of cryptographic key transmission is solved by using a Quantum Key Description(QKD). It is one kind of one-time pad in quantum theory. Suppose that Alice and Bob want to share a random key before they communicate. They must first define the spin type, left and right, to represent 0 and 1, respectively. We call the spin up and down types as key 1, and the spin left and right as key 2. Alice first prepares a sequence of qubits with random spin types. She sends the sequence to Bob. Bob then measures them with random spin types. If Bob chooses the same position type as Alice prepared, they can exactly get bit 0 or 1. They have then created a random shared key.
Though this method requires in sharing the key before sending the message. Scientist have developed another method called the Quantum Secret Direct Communication(QSDC). In this method, Alice first prepares a sequence of qubits with different spin types. These qubits contain test qubits (darker ones) and message qubits (lighter ones). After preparation she sends the sequence to Bob. Once Bob receives these qubits Alice measures the test qubits for eavesdropper detection. If no eavesdropper is detected, the test qubits are thrown away and communication proceeds. Because the qubits are transmitted to Bob safely, Alice can now tell him the spin type of each message qubit. When Bob measures the message qubits with the correct spin type, he can decode the information from Alice.
Both the methods are highly useful and can provide an efficient method for creating a secure communication. Though there are some challenges that are faced during shifting from the normal encryption method to a quantum encryption is that all hardware and software architecture takes new designs, such as circuit design automation, circuit verification, quantum error correction code, and the algorithm that computes using quantum properties.
Another significant area where quantum computing can play a huge roll and change the study of that field is deciphering Deoxyribonucleic acid(DNA) and other biological units. One of the greatest contribution by Dr. Johnjoe McFadden and Dr. Jim Al-Khalili. At the time, Dr. McFadden, a member of Surrey’s biology department, wanted to ask physicists for advice about how to handle a puzzle regarding DNA mutations. He and his colleagues had been investigating the genetic makeup of a non lethal cousin of M. tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, and they found that under special circumstances — when held in conditions nearly devoid of oxygen — the bacteria mutated in a way that made it especially virulent. What surprised the team was that this particular mutation seemed to occur at a more frequent rate than other mutations. To explain the tuberculosis adaption, Dr. McFadden took the help of quantum computing when Dr. Al-Khalili joined him in his research to find the answer to the questions that Dr. McFadden was stuck on. The quantum solution to this problem was that DNA’s twisted ladder structure requires rungs of hydrogen bonds to hold it together; each bond is essentially made up of a single hydrogen atom that unites two molecules. This means sometimes a single atom can determine whether a gene mutates. And single atoms are vulnerable to quantum weirdness. Usually the single atom sits closer to a molecule on one side of the DNA ladder than the other. Al-Khalili and McFadden dug out a long-forgotten proposal made back in 1963 that suggested DNA mutates when this hydrogen atom tunnels, quantum-mechanically, to the “wrong” half of its rung. The pair built on this by arguing that, thanks to the property of superposition, before it is observed, the atom will simultaneously exist in both a mutated and non-mutated state — that is, it would sit on both sides of the rung at the same time.
With the continuous development in the field of this research there is a high possibility that soon there by might be an answer to all the diseases and mutations that are rooted to the genetic problems. The above two examples of the working of quantum computing are just the start of powerful applications of quantum computing. If there is an uncontrolled development in just any one of the fields of quantum computing, the results can be highly devastating.
For example, if in the field of cryptology scientists and researchers are able to create a perfect RSA-key that could provide a perfect a way of creating a secure communications then it would be impossible for the government to keep a check on the suspicious illegal activities on the Internet. The other issue regarding the gene manipulation is even worse than just encrypting messages. Chip implants that enhance various senses, memory, and perhaps even other capacities such as reasoning ability and creativity may blur the distinction between human and machine. We already have eyeglasses, hearing aids, cochlear implants, hair implants, skin grafts, tooth implants, pacemakers, transplants, and so on, so why should more advanced implants matter? Perhaps there is a difference between helping people to be “normal”—that is, correcting a deficiency—and making a normal person a “superhuman.” But just why this is the case would need to be spelt out. This situation presents us the question whether there should be put any control over the research being carried over in the field of quantum computing.
There are, however, a number of issues that need to be sorted out before we can be confident in affirming this. One concerns the differences between pure research and technological development; another issue is the use to which that development is put. The first question here is whether there is any pure research that should not be undertaken—that is, whether there is any “forbidden knowledge”: Is there any knowledge that we should not attempt to discover? A related question is whether there is any technology that should not be developed, and there is the further question of limits to the uses of that technology.
We should bear in mind that there are distinctions between knowledge, the technology developed from that knowledge, and the uses to which the knowledge is put. Certain uses of knowledge (or the technology based on the knowledge) ought to be avoided if those uses cause harm. The emphasis for the moment is on the knowledge itself. The knowledge must also be distinguished from the method of gaining that knowledge. Clearly certain methods for gaining knowledge are wrong, for example, those that cause harm. (In particular situations some greater good may make some degree of harm, both in the gaining of knowledge and in its use, permissible.) The question of whether the knowledge itself ought to be forbidden is, or seems to be, quite a different matter. Knowledge is neither morally good nor morally bad in the way that methods or uses might be.