We’re on the verge of the ‘next breakthrough’. Not AI, that’s almost outdated and superseded already, along with driverless cars, planes and pushbikes (can’t see the point either but it’s something to be conquered, so why not?). Your watch can tell you that your heart-rate is problematic, your blood sugar low and your step count not what it should be, and it will contact your doctor’s surgery right now!!!! Which won’t get you an appointment, nothing can do that, but it will give you something to panic about. We can already order chicken tikka masala and chips from the heads-up display in our cars, so really, I’d thought we’d reached a pinnacle in technological advances.

But you ain’t seen nothing yet. Because computers are being designed which will make your latest Apple desktop seem like an abacus. They will make you wonder how you ever thought it acceptable to wait 0.034 milliseconds for the football scores to download. Even though, for some of us, that delay was the best bit.

Quantum computers are different. Totally different. They work on Quantum Mechanics, a subject so brilliantly, physics-ally, amazingly opaque that the moment you profess to understand it they have to lock you away forever as a danger to mankind.

In the ‘normal’ world of IPads and Windows 10 and stuff, if you toss a coin, it will land as either heads or tails. Are you following me so far? If not, call me now and I’ll go into more detail. In quantum physics that same coin can land heads and tails together, or neither, plus the normal heads or tails. Don’t ask me how, FFS, just accept it or go read something else. It’s how it is. So whereas all ‘normal’ computers work exactly like that, simple binary (I know, how out-moded, right, to be ‘binary’) outcomes. 1 or 0. Yes or no. On or off. And repeated billions of times every time you press www.pornhub.com. Well quantum computers don’t have ‘binary gates’, they use qubits. Which do not go through a series of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options to arrive at a result. Qubits take all the information and work out every possible outcome simultaneously. Spitting out the right answer in half the time it takes to say ‘I just don’t understand this’.

A minor problem. Due to the sensitivity of quantum processors, the current ones have to be kept at -272 degrees celcius. That’s just 1 degree off ‘absolute zero’ at which everything stops completely. Which would mean to have a quantum computer you’d have to live in an environment even colder than Marks and Spencer’s food hall. I’m not sure my fridge could get that cold, I may have to try and modify it with a turbocharger. Mel will be happy. Joey will help me.

Spurs are playing at Man United this afternoon. I’m seriously looking for a non-binary result there. Maybe if I cool the tv down a bit…

Happy Sunday

A xxxx