I have been studying an excellent math book on quantum computing: Quantum Computing for Everyone. It doesn’t sound like a math book but it is. Man, math is so awesome. I highly recommend both math and this book.
For whatever reason, no amount of pop-science articles have been able to dry up the cloud of mystery surrounding quantum computing. How does it work, conceptually? How do gates work? Quantum cryptography? I’m not going to explain these things, here. Now that I’m an expert, I recommend you instead just read the book (Author’s Note: be advised that even if you do read the book, I, having read it slightly before you, will be slightly more expert).
It’s hard for me to relate to you my complete and total comprehension of the subject of quantum computing.
Have you ever heard of Squaring the Circle? I recall reading about this problem sometime in high school and thinking, “Pff, I could do that.” I also “constructed” a triangle with infinite perimeter and parallel sides after reading a book about Poincaré. Neither “proof” impressed my math teacher, under whose tutelage I was currently earning a shaky B- (or as I explained to my mother, a “strong C+”).
You see, I have a history of heading in the wrong direction to better understand the right direction. So when I tell you that I was reading this quantum computing book and had to set it down and start writing a construction for superluminal communication, you have to believe that it’s only because of my complete mastery of quantum computing that I did it.
Einstein and Schrödinger tried their best but it’s time for a real thinker to take a whack at it. A programmer. I’ve already been in contact with the Head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. I’m not joking, somehow he’s a friend of a friend. He said it was wrong (UPDATE: The Fermi Lab guy still thinks it’s wrong). Who’s to believe though?
You can read the beginning of my construction below or download it here. I wrap it up with a “lessons learned”, but you can see where I was stupidly going.
What can I say, I’ve always been a square-circler.