3 ms·

Considering there is so much we don't understand it's possible those gates could artificial depending on what's being worked on. Or maybe there is a workaround

Considering there is so much we don't understand it's possible those gates could artificial depending on what's being worked on. Or maybe there is a workaround we haven't figured out yet. I'm optimistic that many things people say today that are impossible will eventually become possible. Except time travel to the past; that shit just hurts my head :)

Retric 11y ago
Let's start with something we all know and love. Computers, I want one that 1 trillion times faster how? Unfortunately, physics has not changed much. There is a great speech from 1959 about how small you can make things: http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html People don't say that anymore, because we are already building really tiny things. Sure when your using ~10^20th atoms in a transistor there is a lot of room to grow. In 2008, researchers made transistors one atom thick and ten atoms wide. Where do you go from there? People want to say 3d, but we already make chips in several layers and heat is an issue.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > Physics has not changed much What time frame are we talking here? We're constantly learning about how more stuff works. Physics has had plenty of changes[1] but perhaps you're only speaking to very specific theories that have not changed such as relativity? In which case yeah it hasn't changed much but there is also a disconnect between relativity and quantum mechanics and it seems a pretty large majority of scientists think there is a unified way to make them one theory so obviously our understand of both is not entirely accurate (though our observations with relativity are pretty spot on). > Where do you go from there? Hard to say since I'm not a physicist or hardware engineer but I've seen lots of interesting talks about scaling down more and more when we didn't think we could before. Ultimately there may be a size in which we can't get any smaller with conventional processor architecture but that doesn't mean we can't build new ones. Optical based processors, built in a 3D way, allows for far more overlap than transistors since light passing through each other doesn't interfere with one another[2] so that looks really interesting. Quantum computing also promises great speed increases which perhaps could eventually be scaled down to closer to quantum sizes than traditional computing. I think everything is getting much harder than the breakthrough before it but we seem to keep going and I would be surprised if we end up completely stopped due to hitting some physics block. We'll find a workaround! [1] http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/10/23/the-10-biggest-breakthroughs-in-physics-over-the-past-25-years-according-to-us/ http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/10/23/the-10-biggest-breakt... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing
  - Retric 11y ago
    Quantum Teleportation does not involve matter moving, it's simply a clever name for a far less interesting process than you might think. Quantum Computers are generally far less useful than you might think and go back more than 25 years. Finding planets is hardly a physics breakthrough. Bose Einstein Condensates reference Einstein for a reason being predicted in 1924-5. Anyway, I don't mean physics is static, rather we have been very good at a range of timescales, speeds, and sizes for quite a while. Things you notice with a particle accelerator at 99.999x+ of the speed of light are only so meaningful.
ergothus 11y ago
People often quote Clarke's Third Law, but not as much attention is paid to the first two: (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws ) Clarke's first law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Clarke's second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Retric 11y ago

Let's start with something we all know and love. Computers, I want one that 1 trillion times faster how? Unfortunately, physics has not changed much. There is a great speech from 1959 about how small you can make things: http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html People don't say that anymore, because we are already building really tiny things. Sure when your using ~10^20th atoms in a transistor there is a lot of room to grow. In 2008, researchers made transistors one atom thick and ten atoms wide. Where do you go from there? People want to say 3d, but we already make chips in several layers and heat is an issue.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> Physics has not changed much What time frame are we talking here? We're constantly learning about how more stuff works. Physics has had plenty of changes[1] but perhaps you're only speaking to very specific theories that have not changed such as relativity? In which case yeah it hasn't changed much but there is also a disconnect between relativity and quantum mechanics and it seems a pretty large majority of scientists think there is a unified way to make them one theory so obviously our understand of both is not entirely accurate (though our observations with relativity are pretty spot on). > Where do you go from there? Hard to say since I'm not a physicist or hardware engineer but I've seen lots of interesting talks about scaling down more and more when we didn't think we could before. Ultimately there may be a size in which we can't get any smaller with conventional processor architecture but that doesn't mean we can't build new ones. Optical based processors, built in a 3D way, allows for far more overlap than transistors since light passing through each other doesn't interfere with one another[2] so that looks really interesting. Quantum computing also promises great speed increases which perhaps could eventually be scaled down to closer to quantum sizes than traditional computing. I think everything is getting much harder than the breakthrough before it but we seem to keep going and I would be surprised if we end up completely stopped due to hitting some physics block. We'll find a workaround! [1] http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/10/23/the-10-biggest-breakthroughs-in-physics-over-the-past-25-years-according-to-us/ http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/10/23/the-10-biggest-breakt... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing
- Retric 11y ago
  Quantum Teleportation does not involve matter moving, it's simply a clever name for a far less interesting process than you might think. Quantum Computers are generally far less useful than you might think and go back more than 25 years. Finding planets is hardly a physics breakthrough. Bose Einstein Condensates reference Einstein for a reason being predicted in 1924-5. Anyway, I don't mean physics is static, rather we have been very good at a range of timescales, speeds, and sizes for quite a while. Things you notice with a particle accelerator at 99.999x+ of the speed of light are only so meaningful.

ergothus 11y ago

People often quote Clarke's Third Law, but not as much attention is paid to the first two: (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws ) Clarke's first law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Clarke's second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.