Walt Mankowski via plug on 23 May 2026 04:09:34 -0700


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Re: [PLUG] Quantum computing talk Thursday night at Princeton ACM


I'm glad you enjoyed it, and now I'm even more sad that I missed it!
But I'm glad to hear there's a video of it. I know some of the
organizers up there. If I see a link to the video I'll post it here.

I was also interested of this line in Michael's email

> why that technology failed while quantum computing succeeded.

since as far as I can tell from an outsider, it hasn't succeeded yet!
Did the speaker give a sense that we'll have actual quantum computers
any time soon?

Walt

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 02:58:37PM -0400, Alan D. Salewski via plug wrote:
> I was on the Zoom session as a wallflower. A fair amount of the physics went
> over my head, and I was not familiar with all the players in the story, but
> it was fascinating hearing Terry Bollinger's retracing the history of the
> ideas behind quantum computing -- with an emphasis on a split in
> perspectives between Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett -- and how that
> affected how we think about it today. I'm looking forward to getting my
> hands on the video recording so I can study it better and maybe track down
> some of the referenced writings.
> 
> There were quite a few ideas presented that were mind-bending to me. A
> particular idea that was new to me was that "Maxwell's equations cannot
> explain all electromagnetic phenomena if they are interpreted /only/ in the
> future direction". (Emphasis in original) I took a screenshot of the (CC BY
> 4.0)[0] slide, and am sharing a plain text approximation of it here as a
> taste:
> 
> <quote>
>                    The Strange Issue of Recoil
> 
> 
>   => Contrary to what you likely have heard...
> 
>      -> Maxwell's equations cannot explain all electromagnetic
> phenomena _if they are interpreted /only/ in the future direction_
> 
>      -> The missing behavior: _Recoil after charge acceleration_
> 
>      -> The only fully conserving momentum-energy source of local
> recoil is the _particle that absorbs the photon in the future_
> 
>      -> _That particle could be billions of years in the future
> 
>   => An experiment: Shine a laser into the darkest part of space
> 
>      -> With sufficiently good instruments, you can _detect a recoil effect_
> 
>      -> _That recoil is a testable example of the future affecting you now_
> </quote>
> 
> If that sounds interesting to you, then you'll love the video section where
> that leads into a discussion of quantum computing in two-dimensional time.
> 
> As he notes elsewhere on this thread, Michael Lazin was also there and asked
> Bollinger a couple of interesting questions, one which led to an interesting
> high-level discussion of chemical computers (another topic I need to read up
> on; thanks, Michael, for bringing them up).
> 
> Thanks, Walt, for bringing that meeting to our attention. I'm very happy
> that I was able to make it.
> 
> -Al
> 
> 
> [0] CC BY 4.0
>     https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
> 
> -- 
> a l a n   d.   s a l e w s k i
> ads@salewski.email
> salewski@att.net
> https://github.com/salewski
> 
> 
> On 2026-05-22 10:34:27, Walt Mankowski via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> spake thus:
> > I needed to run some errands after work and totally forgot all about
> > this until this morning. Did anyone attend?
> > 
> > Walt
> > 
> > On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 05:20:06PM -0400, Michael Lazin via plug wrote:
> > > I will try to attend this because I am interested in the idea of quantum
> > > cryptography.  I am more interested in the creation and protection of
> > > quantum cryptographic keys because the qubit provides a physics level
> > > approach to protecting an encryption key because if you view or copy the
> > > key the state of the qubit changes and you cannot know what state the qubit
> > > was in before it was modified.  Please excuse me if this explanation is too
> > > simple.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Michael Lazin
> > > 
> > > .. τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.
> > > 
> > > On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 5:01 PM Walt Mankowski via plug <
> > > plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > Tomorrow night Terry Bollinger will be giving a talk on quantum
> > > > computing at the Princeton ACM. Here's a brief synopsis:
> > > >
> > > > ===
> > > >
> > > > A Deep-Physical Look at Quantum Computing
> > > >
> > > > The talk begins with a description of how David-Deutsch-style quantum
> > > > computing was supposed to undermine all prime-number cryptography
> > > > methods by using only 15 qubits. Not 15 thousand or 15 million: 15
> > > > qubits. What happened after that, and why usable quantum computing
> > > > continues to stump the world decades later, is the topic of this talk.
> > > >
> > > > ===
> > > >
> > > > The meeting is online and starts at 8 PM EDT tomorrow night, May
> > > > 21. For more information go to
> > > >
> > > > https://princetonacm.acm.org/meetings/mtg2605.pdf
> > > >
> > > > Walt
> > > > ___________________________________________________________________________
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> > 
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