I helped to install and cable the neutrino telescope at the South pole, project ice cube. It is not a neutrino super computer, but it can do cool things like detect supernovas before they are visible and can detect nuclear reactions on earth, including reactors and bombs. As others said, not sure neutrinos would work for super computing due to their low interaction with matter. But they do open the door into dark matter research which might be more significant.

if we could represent qbits with neutrinos we'd effectively solve the biggest obstacle to quantum computing which is decoherence. Low interactions with normal matter = very slow decoherence, allowing to build a much more scalable design, without the need for ultra low temperatures.

I love the idea of "real world situation variables" being something a scientist could just drop into a quantum computer, and get answers.

I've got your situation variables right here.

I'm just asking is it possible?

With publicly known science? No, not even remotely. Neutrinos barely react with anything, billions of them just passed through your body as you read this post.

That's an area of physics in which I wouldn't want to overstate what's known with certainty just because Scientific American or Cosmos say it's true.

Look into coherent neutrino detection. It turns out that scintillating neutrino absorption events are rare, while infinitesimal neutrino-nucleus interactions are ubiquitous.

I can't rule out the possibility of novel neutrino applied physics. I can question the weird jargon that seems to be BS, like "situation variables."

weird jargon that seems to be BS, like "situation variables."

I agree poster seems to use non-standard jargon. However, situation variables make perfect sense to future-predicting modelling software applications, such as what currently tracks weather. That will be on the computer side of things, and a whole lot of messy detail is related to it, like how exactly do you scrape and funnel billions of real-time measurements into your data structure before starting a processing run...

I don't understand why you would need to mess with neutrinos. Isn't the point of quantum computers to be able to use more than just 0 and 1s. I thought it was about getting a 3rd position or more per register..... The first thing that comes to my mind is using nuclear magnetic resonance like a MRI machine does. You could make a hydrogen atom hold many positions like a clock.

No, it's not possible if we stick with the details provided. It's possible there is some neutrino quantum computer tech, but this article doesn't provide meaningful explanations that convince practitioners of computer science.

This wiki article related?

"I'm now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate!"

Using neutrinos? Very very unlikely since they don't really interact with other matter all that much. No real way to read them.

on the other hand not reacting with other matter all that much would greatly help with harnessing decoherence (which currently is the greatest obstacle to scaling quantum computers)

Please explain.

I think Wikipedia does a good job on this topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

As long as there exists a definite phase relation between different states, the system is said to be coherent. This coherence is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, and is necessary for the functioning of quantum computers. However, when a quantum system is not perfectly isolated, but in contact with its surroundings, coherence decays with time, a process called quantum decoherence. As a result of this process, the relevant quantum behaviour is lost.

This is why the simple quantum computers that we have need to be cooled with liquid nitrogen or liquid helium to minimize the "background noise" (temperature is proportional to how often particles interact with the surroundings). Lower temperature = less interactions with the environment = longer coherence = more time of stable operation for the quantum computer.

This phenomenon is the main barrier that prevents building a quantum computer with 2 million qbits - it would need to be a large system and decoherence would be instant, preventing any calculations from being performed, even near absolute zero temp.

Neutrinos on the other hand only interact with the weak force and with gravity. Weak force has a very short range of interaction, while gravity is weak compared to other forces. So they have a great advantage - they barely interact with normal matter, and at least theoretically could be used to maintain long term coherence of quantum systems. And by long term I mean very long term.

There are a few problems with using neutrinos though - the first one is that they do interact with gravity, so if you created some, they'd go right through the floor towards the Earth's core rather quickly ;-) Unless you're in a zero-gravity environment (e.g. orbit).

There are probably more challenges to be solved (e.g. how to set them up to form qbits, how to read the quantum state etc.), but I'm not a particle physicist so I have no idea if and how they could be solved.

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

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Seems to me the biggest problem is the fact they don't really interact with matter. Hell look at the size of the detectors we have built. And those are just to detect their presence. How are we supposed to detect let alone read information from a particle so light we first thought they were massless and so weakly interacting with matter that they were just a theory for decades?

How are we supposed to

finding answers to such questions is the essence of progress ;-)

There are more problems involved though, dive into this link if you're curious: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/211205/nobel-prize-challenge-could-neutrinos-be-used-for-quantum-information-processin

Yeah so neutrinos could be used because of their inherent property of not strongly interacting with matter. Sure nice thought experiment but since we can't even steer them with magnetic forces and the detectors are so large we would need a huge breakthrough in physics just for it to be possible. We are talking finding a new fundamental force breakthrough which would have much wider applications than just a computer.

Well put. Gotta dream big though!

neutrinos

its a word used to bamboozle the technically lacking but ambitious, akin to flat earth for the NASA doubters.

I haven't heard of this before, but it's interesting. Do you have any more info?

I've thought of this before, if you can accurately simulate EVERY detail about present day earth, it's properties, its population, then you could accurately predict the future with it.

Opinions aside, Destiny 2 has a whole level based around a super computer that simulates all of reality, and it's used to determine the outcomes of different events.

This wouldn't really work for two reasons:

1. Chaotic dynamics require perfect accuracy to make good predictions, and even miniscule rounding errors in measurements will produce large deviations from the observed reality. Even quantum amplitudes, which evolve deterministically, are subject to the problem of chaos.

2. Quantum mechanically, the future state of the universe is not determined by its current and past states. If a quantum computer was able to predict the future, it would not be doing simulation in the usual sense. This wouldn't be a matter of just taking our current understanding of prediction to its fullest extreme, but rather a fundamental rewriting of our understanding of physics.

All of that said, it is amazing how much can be simulated over relatively short periods of time. However, the most advanced models are absolutely massive undertakings to prepare and execute, and even these are just catching a small glimpse of the full evolution of the world around us.

I'd be curious on how they used the neutrino as they can't be 'contained'.

[deleted]

Tyler is deep east Texas. And the food is good too.

So I normally just lurk here. I have just one other post in thus subreddit, but every so often something compels me to want to say something. Normally I don’t because I’m long winded (even in type format), but this time round I feel I will.

Neutrino based supercomputers are not, as far as publicly or even academically available knowledge (and yes there is sadly a difference) is concerned, practical or possible. I make no claim to be in the know of the theoretical bleeding edge of the intersection of physics and computation, but I like to be caught up in the more recent advances these fields when I can. I’ve never read anything about using neutrinos to help in speeding up computer processes. Communication I have. Neutrinos barely interact and pass through everything so the idea to send a message via a neutrino beams through all sorts of matter with no or little distortion or interference is very attractive, but even then, still not entirely practical though has been done. That’s beside the point.

Let’s look at the idea of predicting outcomes. The number of variables that would need to be accounted for to even remotely have any chance of coming close to predicting future outcomes are so large as to be essentially unknowable. In a closed system of a non-significant size with an understood number of labels/variables it’s possible to predict some outcomes. Though we must recognize that as systems get bigger and move from closed to open the number of labels/variables available grows exponentially. Some can be weeded out, but just a single rogue variable and the entire calculation is flawed. On this aspect it would help to know what exactly they are trying to predict.

I don’t get the fascination with CERN and Area 51. That’s another thread though. As for Antarctica, if they are using it for cooling its not because of the ice just the cool water and ambient temperature. Same idea with water cooling your computer and keeping your air-cooled pc in a cool place. I wouldn’t place my one of a kind future predicting Uber computer in Antarctica because pcs actually run better when they aren't freezing. Also you can get water in a lot of places. Arguably cool water wouldn’t even be needed or the best solution when compared to say liquid metal cooling or even other liquid refrigerant chemicals. I believe most supercomputers these days are actually air-cooled.

As for the gentlemen in question. I could only get through portions of the interview because every part I skipped to was droll. To that I mean no offense, but none of what I heard was anything but surface level or misappropriated. I couldn’t make the connections he was making because I don’t see them and that isn’t entirely his fault as I did just skim his work. For instance, yes, the dark web is full of criminal activity and that’s kind of the point. If it was legal it wouldn’t need to be there. I don’t see people pushing to bring that activity to light through making a completely laisse faire system. I watched two of his channel videos and got nothing from them. I see a guy who claims to visit onion sites, the dark web, appears to have some knowledge of coding and who believes he is uncovering or fighting against something someone (TPTB?) is/are doing. As long as he doesn’t hurt anyone, let him fight the good fight. I'm personally moving on.

One final thing though. Currently the fastest supercomputer in the world is the TaihuLight in China. As I understand it, it is 5x faster than the fastest US supercomputer, Titan. The US has plans to have the Summit supercomputer active sometime this year. It is speculated to be up to 2x faster than TaihuLight, but it could be faster and hopefully wont a mere marginal improvement. Why would the government invest in a marginally or only 2x better computer when we know it can do better? Either the US is involved in the international supercomputer-peen waving contest or it isn’t.

Either the US is involved in the international supercomputer-peen waving contest or it isn’t.

Or we have outsourced non-quantum supercomputer dev to China? I suspect we have/expect another generation that will obsolete it. And they have a lot of scientists to keep busy - probably more than we do at this point, even with all the green card experts in-country.

Edit: I too could not get through those videos...

I'm just curious about the maintenance of the US image. I mean because, and this is an overly gross simplification, a supercomputer is just parallelized GPUs its "literally" just adding more GPUs or better GPUs to get more comp power. At the end of the day it is "just" supercomputers, but intellectual fortitude is a must and if the best the US can show for its current generation of technology is only 2x better than China then that worries me because its a reflection of allegedly genuine computational development. Of course all this tech the US uses is commercially available (AFAIK) while I believe the Chinese are proprietary state-developed so it goes to show the US commercial base is better than the Chinese government, which is not exactly shocking I suppose. So...hmm...yup.

I do get what you're saying though and I'm probably unnecessarily concerned with it. I'm super excited for quantum computing, for it to break our understanding and, if not just for protection, I for one welcome our new AI overlords.

Roko's basilisk supreme dictate: thou shalt be [god].

welcome our new AI overlords

Sounds like you are one already?

intellectual fortitude is a must

Including not just a mastery of techno-social apparatuses, but the much more difficult task for an average citizen like me and - I assume - you. Figuring out what technology already exists but is not allowed in the marketplace. And that goes for education as well as jobs. Show me a vocational school talking about quantum transportation and I'll show you a strong nation. We did have that, essentially, in WWII, but with industry, not tech. It's a different game.

only 2x better than China

If the Americans were not allowed free access to the technology of the early 20th century (Tesla just an example) - why would the Chinese have it? The thing about tech is that it can be copied much faster than it can be "grown from soil" in a culture. Look at the list of tech-innovation nations. China's in at 13.

Also I like Quinn's ideas on AI but he does not know much about neutrinos. If you watch the video where he goes to Fermi lab he gets schooled. He's thinking of a synchrotron radiation ring, mainly used for particle research. Basically a small particle accelerator. These are incorporated with supercomputers, but mainly for 2 nanosecond resolution required for physics experiments to be accurately measured down to the Planck constant.

Its a massive neutrino detector hooked up to a convention supercomputer, not a neutrino computer, which isnt a thing.

Also, you can do all that prediction with cheap silicon http://www.fujitsu.com/global/digitalannealer/

or a moderately expensive D Wave.

I'm all for new conspiracy theories but just to play some devil's advocate, why would they want to put a fancy computer in Antarctica to keep it cool? They'd have to have people there, power it somehow, and get the data out - I don't think many satellites orbit the poles. It's be waaay easier and more cooling efficiency to use a traditional non-arctic-ice cooling system