Others Are Catching On!
Check out this paper (emphases included are mine). John Titor claimed to be a time traveler who was telling you about our future, which is of course hogwash. I am an engineer who dabbles in the theoretical sciences. I don't claim to be a time traveler, nor make any other wild, unbelievable claims. And yet I am telling you about how our past and present are leading to a VERY clear view of what our future will become! And unlike John Titor, I won't "run away" from the predictions I am laying out in these posts.
RMT
> "Nature Physics 1, 2-4 (2005)
> doi:10.1038/nphys134
>
Is information the key?
> Gilles Brassard1
> 0.Gilles Brassard is in the Dpartement d'informatique et de
> recherche oprationnelle, Universit de Montral, Qubec H3C
> 3J7, Canada. e-mail:
[email redacted]
>
> Abstract
> Quantum information science has brought us novel means of
> calculation and communication. But could its theorems hold the key
> to understanding the quantum world at its most profound level? Do
> the truly fundamental laws of nature concern — not waves and
> particles — but information?
>
> Imagine, what if all of quantum mechanics could be derived simply
> by taking those two quantum cryptographic theorems as axioms?
>
> This year marks the centenary of quantum mechanics. Despite earlier
> work by Max Planck, it was Albert Einstein's Nobel prize-winning
> 1905 paper 1 on the photoelectric effect that gave us what is
> arguably the greatest scientific theory of all time. Subsequently,
> the stones that make up the exquisite structure of quantum
> mechanics were laid out, one by one, by a stream of legendary
> giants such as Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner
> Heisenberg — sometimes to the horror of Einstein. An almost
> inevitable consequence of this collective foundational effort over
> so many years is that quantum mechanics, for all its elegance, is
> built upon a rather disjointed, ad hoc set of axioms.
>
> Quantum mechanics has forced us to rethink the nature of the
> physical world, its teachings often running counter to our
> misleading macroscopic experience. It is time to pause and reflect
> on what we've learned in the course of these 100 years. Alongside
> Christopher Fuchs 2, I contend that there is a fresh perspective to
> be taken on the axioms of quantum mechanics that could yield a more
> satisfactory foundation for the theory.
>
> New horizons
> Quantum mechanics has changed our outlook on the world. The
> transistor, the laser, superconductivity, the atomic bomb — these
> early applications of the theory are but a few among those that
> have reshaped the way we live. The transistor made possible a
> dramatic increase in computation speed. However, given enough time,
> cog-and-wheels devices such as Charles Babbage's analytical engine
> are, in principle, capable of the same calculations. In a very real
> sense, the modern electronic computer is essentially a classical
> device. Could genuinely quantum-mechanical effects be harnessed for
> computing purposes?
>
> In the early 1980s, it occurred to Richard Feynman 3 and David
> Deutsch 4 that a quantum computer could become so efficient that it
> would far outperform its classical counterpart. For example, an
> atom can be simultaneously in its ground and excited states. If we
> assign classical bit 0 to one state and bit 1 to the other (Fig.
> 1), this gives us a quantum bit, or qubit. If we string together
> ten qubits, they can be collectively in all 1024 classical states
> of ten bits, and we can compute using all those states in parallel.
> If we replace those ten qubits by one thousand, we obtain 2^1,000
> (roughly 10^301) simultaneous operations. This entails an amount of
> parallelism that could not be matched by a classical computer the
> size of the Universe, in which each elementary particle would be
> harnessed as a processing unit.
>
> Figure 1 - Assign classical bits 0 and 1 to, for example, the
> ground and excited states of an atom, and the power of quantum
> computation is unleashed.
>
> But, even if the quantum computer existed, could it perform
> calculations that are impossible in the classical world?
>
> Quantum computing was at first regarded as a mere theoretical
> concept, but interest in it grew when Peter Shor discovered a way
> to use its capabilities to factorize large numbers efficiently 5.
> Such a computer would threaten the public-key cryptographic schemes
> currently in use, in particular for the secure transmission of
> credit card numbers over the Internet. Electronic commerce in its
> current form is saved from a catastrophic collapse only because the
> construction of a full-size quantum computer is, for the moment,
> eluding our technological capabilities. And we can only shiver to
> think of the effect that such a collapse of classical cryptography
> could have on national security. Even though the potential of
> quantum computers is mind-boggling, that does not change the
> theoretical notion of what is computable. The mathematical theory
> of computability is rooted in the 1936 groundbreaking work of Alan
> Turing 6. According to this theory, a problem is deemed to be
> computable if an algorithm can solve it, no matter how long it
> would take — even, indeed, should it take longer than the lifetime
> of the Universe. From this perspective, quantum computers can only
> solve problems that are already classically computable.
>
> Enter cryptography
> This begs the question: are there information-processing tasks that
> are impossible even in principle in the classical world, but that
> become possible through quantum mechanics? Even though unpublished
> for nearly fifteen years, the answer came to Stephen Wiesner well
> before anyone had thought of quantum computing. Around 1970, he
> discovered that quantum-mechanical effects could be used to produce
> banknotes that would be impossible to counterfeit 7. Because
> quantum information cannot be cloned, Wiesner realized that a
> banknote that contained quantum information would be impossible to
> copy. Unfortunately, this revolutionary (albeit impractical) idea
> went completely unnoticed, except by Wiesner's former undergraduate
> classmate Charles H. Bennett.
>
> Almost a decade elapsed before Bennett told me of Wiesner's idea,
> which led to our joint invention of quantum cryptography 8, 9. For
> ages, mathematicians had searched for a system that would allow two
> people to exchange messages in absolute secrecy. In the 1940s,
> Claude Shannon proved that this goal is impossible unless the two
> communicating parties share a random secret key that is as long as
> the message they want to communicate 10; moreover, that secret key
> can be used once only. In quantum cryptography, however, this
> pessimistic theorem can be thwarted by exploiting both the
> impossibility of measuring quantum information reliably and the
> unavoidable disturbance caused by such measurements. When
> information is appropriately encoded as quantum states, any attempt
> by an eavesdropper to access it necessarily entails a probability
> of spoiling it irreversibly. This disturbance can be detected by
> the legitimate users, allowing them to establish an unconditionally
> secure confidential channel with no need for a shared secret key.
> After we reported 11 the first experimental realization of quantum
> cryptography, Deutsch wrote 12 in New Scientist: "Alan Turing's
> theoretical model is the basis of all computers. Now, for the first
> time, its capabilities have been exceeded." It is interesting to
> note that quantum computers threaten most of the classical
> cryptographic schemes in use today, but that quantum cryptography
> offers an unconditionally secure alternative."
>
> Only if the perfect no-cloning theorem prevents "signal
> nonlocality" as defined in papers by Antony Valentini now at the
> Perimeter Institute. If micro-quantum theory is to macro-quantum
> theory (with hidden symmetries in the ground state of large
> systems) as special relativity is to general relativity, then the
> "unconditionally secure alternative" could be the "Maginot Line" of
> the National Security Corporate State. The Fat Lady has not sung on
> this yet and policy wonks in USG Intelligence should not be lulled
> into a false sense of security by the above kinds of statements.
>
> "The most obvious goal of cryptography always has been the secure
> transmission of confidential information, but the past three
> decades have seen the rise of a host of novel applications for
> cryptographic techniques, such as digital signatures and secure
> multiparty computation. However, all these classical concepts are
> obviously defeated if cheaters are allowed unlimited computing
> power. Moreover, most of their proposed implementations fall prey
> to quantum computing attacks 5. After the success of quantum
> cryptography in confidential communication, it was natural to hope
> that quantum techniques could also assist in designing
> unconditionally secure protocols for these more sophisticated tasks.
>
> One of the simplest tasks is known as 'bit commitment' — a rather
> abstract concept but a crucial stepping-stone to achieving more
> impressive cryptographic goals. In a bit-commitment scheme, one
> party (Alice) commits to a bit by sending something to the other
> party (Bob). Later, Alice can unveil the commitment, thereby
> letting Bob know to which bit she had committed. The scheme is
> 'concealing' if it's impossible for Bob to learn anything about the
> committed bit simply by analysing what Alice sent him when she
> committed; it is 'binding' if it's impossible for Alice to delay
> until unveiling the choice of bit she wants to show Bob.
>
> For many years, the design of an unconditionally concealing and
> binding protocol to implement bit commitment by quantum means was
> considered the key to unlock almost everything we may wish to do
> with cryptography. Unfortunately, it was proven — independently by
> Dominic Mayers13 and by Hoi-Kwong Lo and Hoi Fung Chau 14 — that
> such quantum schemes are impossible.
>
> A fresh perspective
> Quantum mechanics can help cryptography, but only up to a point: it
> does allow unconditionally secure transmission of confidential
> information, but not unconditionally secure bit commitment. These
> two facts are generally considered to be deep theorems of modern
> quantum information science. But do their implications reach beyond
> information science? What might they tell us about the wider
> physical world?
>
> Fuchs — the prime mover in this intellectual venture — has gone
> so far as to suggest that the first of these theorems (the
> possibility of perfect confidentiality), or perhaps others of a
> similar informational flavour, could serve as the basis of a new
> foundation for quantum mechanics, in which information takes centre
> stage. Inspired by the fascinating discussions I had had with
> Fuchs, it occurred to me that the second theorem (the impossibility
> of bit commitment) could be just as fundamental 15. Imagine, what
> if all of quantum mechanics could be derived simply by taking those
> two quantum cryptographic theorems as axioms?
>
> Admittedly, in its original form this idea was trashed by John
> Smolin, who devised an artificial world in which unconditional
> confidentiality was possible but not bit commitment, and his world
> was anything but a quantum one 16. But discussions with Jeffrey Bub
> breathed new life into Fuchs' and my dream. With Rob Clifton and
> Hans Halvorson, he chose to pull away somewhat from cryptography
> and declare more fundamental properties of quantum information as
> their axioms: the fact that no manipulations taking place at some
> point in space can have an instantaneously observable effect at
> some remote other point (the 'no-signalling property'); and that
> information cannot be cloned."
>
> Don't be so sure. However, one can see that factual violation of
> the 'no-signalling property" brings the whole quantum cryptography
> program down like an unstable house of cards. Quantum security
> rests on shaky ground that could turn into quicksand.
>
> "This pair replaced the axiom that transmitting information with
> unconditional confidentiality is possible, and they kept the axiom
> that unconditionally secure bit commitment is impossible.
>
> To derive anything from these information-theoretic essentials,
> they had to assume that the laws of physics can be formalized in
> the framework of mathematical tools known as C*-algebras. But it is
> amazing where their axioms took them: they were able to derive
> basic kinematic features of quantum mechanics, such as the
> principle of interference, the non-commutativity of measurements
> and the existence of space-like separated entanglement 17. A
> fascinating feature in their approach is that the impossibility of
> bit commitment is used to prove not only that entanglement exists,
> but that it must survive indefinitely across time and space —
> which is indeed the single most non-classical property of quantum
> mechanics.
>
> These are only the first steps, but could we eventually base
> quantum mechanics on information-theory axioms alone, without the
> need for specific assumptions about the physical theory (such as
> the use of C*-algebras)? Could we infer more about quantum
> mechanics than purely the kinematic properties mentioned above?
> Which other theorems of quantum information science might make
> powerful axioms for quantum mechanics when we turn the table round?
>
> On that last point, I have a suggestion. Consider the field of
> communication complexity, which concerns the amount of information
> that must be transmitted between two parties to compute some
> function of private inputs that they hold. It turns out that the
> required transfer can be reduced dramatically in some cases when
> the parties share prior entanglement 18. Nevertheless, even in the
> presence of unlimited shared entanglement, some boolean functions
> require a number of bits of communication that grows linearly with
> the input size.
>
> It was discovered by Wim van Dam 19, and independently by Richard
> Cleve, that all boolean functions could be computed with a single
> bit of communication, should physics allow a certain form of non-
> local correlation even stronger than those provided by quantum
> entanglement. What makes this discovery so interesting is that
> those super-quantum correlations do not violate the no-signalling
> property 20. In other words, quantum mechanics exhibits non-local
> properties within the framework of Einstein's causality — but not
> as strongly as it could.
>
> Once again we should ask what all of this is trying to tell us
> about nature. I suggest that this could be another axiom: it is not
> possible to compute all bipartite boolean functions with a single
> bit of communication. How much more of quantum mechanics might be
> derived from it?
>
> A century after Einstein's annus mirabilis, quantum information
> science could turn out to be much more than just an application of
> quantum theory. It could define its very nature."
>
>
> References
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