Beyond Science Fiction

"The important part is to realize that it wasn't any different [a century ago]. Everyone then thought it couldn't get any better. Everyone was amazed with the state of the art, you know. They had hot and cold running water, and an icebox. Maybe a few years later they had a radio. And life couldn't get any better, right? and yet it did."
Mike Lazaridis, founder, vice-chairman, BlackBerry

"My bet is that all these devices will be improved by going to the size of atoms and manipulating the quantum mechanics there. I think they'll be everywhere.
"We will eat them [not as food, but as medicines]."
Professor Raymond Laflamme, IQC executive director

Quantum mechanics, the wave of the future. The not-too-distant future, if Professor Laflamme, a quantum scientist who left Los Alamos National Laboratory for the opportunity to work at the University of Waterloo's Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre, has anything to say about the matter. Professor Laflamme was known for his influence at Cambridge University on his teacher, Stephen Hawking.

According to Professor Laflamme, within a few years his team will have succeeding in building a true quantum computer of 50 to 100 qubits. A qubit is a physical system, an etching on a metal chip cooled to near absolute zero or a gas held by a magnetic field, or floating freely in a liquid; it possesses the mystic ability to 'be' in multiple quantum states at the same time; superposition as it's known. Qubits have proven elusive to maintain, they tend to slip away.

Qubits would have to be stabilized, to ensure that the incredible power that potentially exists within them doesn't disappear randomly before a computer depending on their power could ever be produced. Professor Laflamme has a single qubit, a wafer of etched aluminum-coated silicon that fits in the palm of his hand with ample room for many others...and another tiny piece of lab-created diamond with a qubit built inside its carbon structure.

"A bridge of diamond. This is verging on science fiction and what I'm going to tell you is, even this is probably not crazy enough ... In a sense [investing in quantum] was just a bet, because you're betting against the prevailing culture, the prevailing idea, the prevailing attitudes. What you're looking for is exponential growth. Linear growth is boring. Anything you can predict is linear. What you really want is, you want to think about, well, you want to hope that no matter how wild your thinking is, it's not wild enough", Mike Lazaridis said, attempting to explain his vision.

A quantum computer will represent a device capable of achieving calculations with the use of qubits; a physical system etched sometimes into a chip of metal, for example. A quantum computer of 30 qubits would far exceed what current-model computers are capable of modeling with accuracy. A qubit computer could readily exceed the power of computers whose transistor bits place physical limits on the scope of their calculation; they are on or off, one or zero.

A qubit computer would have no limitations.

the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC)

As though our world is not scientifically improbable and complex enough as it is. For such visionaries as Mr. Lazaridis and Professor Laflamme, the future is set to arrive. Humankind's capacity to manipulate the mysteries of nature seems to know no boundaries when such assured determination speaks of the opening of dimensions within nature that hypotheses suggest exist, but have yet to be fully demonstrated.