All science begins with curiosity Curiosity about the

All science begins with curiosity Curiosity about the world leads to observation

Observation leads to theory We learn to predict and harness the forces of nature

Theory fosters technology By understanding natural phenomena we learn to re-create them

Technology is a pillar of society Hunters become gatherers, villages become towns, towns become cities…

The chain of discovery leads to new technologies

Each curious generation refines and improves technology

We are still driven by curiosity To understand our world, we now turn our curiosity toward the quantum frontier

The Quantum Frontier Where rules (of classical physics) are made to be broken “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word. ” – Niels Bohr

Quantum Weirdness Particles can be both here and there, or neither here nor there…

The certainty of uncertainty We cannot observe the quantum world without disturbing it

Enter the Quantum Computer We can capitalize on the weirdness of quantum physics to build computers of unprecedented power

The New Bits: Qubits Beyond binary, the quantum computer will process data of zeros, ones… and quantum superpositions of zeros and ones

Quantum uncertainty allows for unbreakable encryption Quantum encryption will secure communications, even though free space

Unrivalled computing power # of quantum bits quantum states # of classical bits 0, 1 21=2 2 00, 01, 10, 11 22=4 3 000, 001, … 111 23=8 000000 … 250=1 P … 1 50 …

Quantum Leap “The nineteenth century was known as the machine age; the twentieth century will go down in history as the information age. I believe the twenty-first century will be the quantum age. ” -Paul Davies, theoretical physicist and winner of the 1995 Templeton Prize