This Week’s Hype

According to this article, string theory is going to be tested using quantum computers, by doing a lattice QCD calculation:

The way string theory is tested involves ‘lattice quantum chromodynamics’: a calculation problem far beyond what digital computers can achieve. ‘Quantum computers,’ he writes, ‘may be the final step in finding the Theory of Everything.’

‘I’m not a computer person. I’m a theoretical physicist,’ he says. ‘But I got into quantum computers because I realised this may be the only way to quantitatively prove that string theory is correct. String theory exists in the multiverse. That is, we exist perhaps in parallel states which are bizarre, with new laws of physics, but we coexist with them. The way to prove it is with a quantum computer.’

I suppose you need to buy the book to find out more.

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6 Responses to This Week’s Hype

  1. In Kaku’s account of it, then, there doesn’t seem to be a human problem that quantum computers won’t be able to fix. The only fly in the ointment, as he mentions not very much more than en passant, is that between here and all the good stuff there are a couple of potential road-bumps.

    Just a couple… 🙄

  2. Chris H says:

    “the first thing that they’ll do along the way is to make it possible to break by ‘brute force’ (i.e. sheer computational welly) every form of encryption on the planet.”

    Is any of that true?

  3. Ling-Nan Zou says:

    Why is anyone at all paying attention to Kaku when he’s been so consistently wrong about pretty much everything? Peter, you need to serve by example and ignore any and all articles involving this guy.

  4. Peter Woit says:

    Ling-Nan Zou,

    Sometimes the high-media profile Kaku craziness is just hard to resist pointing to. But, you’re right, instead I should be pointing to the anti-Kakus who deserve more attention. A blog post of this kind is coming right up…

  5. zzz says:

    Kaku lost me when they brought him on a news channel to talk about a hurricane approaching florida

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