If possible. Advances in the field keep getting announced, and retracted.
Retraction Watch reports:
A year after retracting a Nature paper claiming to find evidence for the elusive Majorana particle that many hope would have paved the way for a quantum computer, a group of researchers have retracted a second paper on the subject from the same journal.Scott Aaronson reports:
Last month, Microsoft announced on the web that it had achieved an experimental breakthrough in topological quantum computing: not quite the creation of a topological qubit, but some of the underlying physics required for that. This followed their needing to retract their previous claim of such a breakthrough, due to the criticisms of Sergey Frolov and others. One imagines that they would’ve taken far greater care this time around. Unfortunately, a research paper doesn’t seem to be available yet. Anyone with further details is welcome to chime in.One imagines. Okay, I can imagine.
When your entire method for computation revolves around theoretical entities based on a hastily published paper based on iffy math, Just stop the goddamn money-grab bus, and get your act together with the requisite components first.
ReplyDeleteYou can't build a cart without first having the wheel pretty well worked out.
You can't build a binary computer without first having a logic gate well understood.
Alan Turing did not invent the digital computer while not having quite worked out the concept of electrical switching.
At this point it is pretty clear that the folks working on quantum computers have something other in mind than actually building a working computer. I $ wonder $ what $ it $ could $ possibly $ be.