“So, Gamma Squad, you pack of superheroic, disgustingly successful, ridiculously handsome sexual dynamos, why are you showing me a picture of two avocados pulling a Fingercuffs on a lemon while a laser impales it?” We’re glad you asked! That’s a picture of an electron being in two places at once in common silicon, which pretty much means quantum computing is possible with silicon chips.
Some UK and Dutch scientists (University of Surrey, University College London, Herriott-Watt Institute and The FOM Institute for Plasma Physics, in case you were wondering) basically blasted an atom within a silicon chip with a very high-power, low wavelength laser, and got the electrons in the atom to be in two states at once.
This may just sound kind of neat, but the far-ranging implications are basically that computers will continue to get tinier and more ridiculously powerful, meaning your gaming rig is going to be obsolete next week no matter what you do. Also crap like pocket supercomputers, artificial intelligence, stuff like that. It’s a big hairy deal.
No, it can’t play “Crysis.”
[ via ScienceDaily ]
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