I've seen there are some efforts, but my understanding is that theory is not the problem there, engineering is. It's hard to overstate how much easier on/off is to measure than a vs b vs c vs etc.
My favourite real computing thing I've seen (haven't read a lot) is that you would only need 1 perfect real number to store an infinite amount of binary data---just think of all the digits after 0 as bits and break the infinite digits up into as many chunks as you need.
As far as I know, the practical applications are analog computing devices, which typically only perform very special calculations. With infinite precision there's a whole field of theory about real computing which is pretty wild, apparently you can do some calculations almost instantly.
..."real" real numbers are subject to error. Physical qubits at the moment come at a premium, so operations on them do use "real" numbers, but the magic of qubits is what some people like to call parallelism, but I prefer to call their nature as vectors, the subjects of linear operations. 2/2
Good question; the answer is that the real (complex) numbers are a (very common) red herring. Classical computation is not binary by logical necessity but for practicality. In principle, you could build a classical computer that uses "real" numbers for bits, but...1/2
3/3 The only role entanglement plays is between the colour TVs themselves. When you make bigger colour TVs, missing out on entanglement results in disproportionately less rich/more muted displays, so the existence of entanglement is really just a relief, one less thing to worry about.
2/3 Going from classical to quantum computation is like going from B&W to Colour TV, the colour is a whole new dimension to play with. No matter what, the colour TVs are fundamentally different from the B&W TVs. Computationally, entanglement only matters when you *scale* the colour TVs.
An analogy for the point of entanglement in quantum computing. Top: Classical to quantum is like the paradigm shift from B&W to colour TVs, Bottom: entanglement vs no entanglement is a thing within colour TVs, the former scales sensibly to bigger TVs, the latter gets muted as the TVs get bigger.
1/3 I've come up with an analogy I would like to test on you. This is purely heuristic, not a direct analogy, but hopefully it's helpful. Non-cartoon version: haymanphysics.com/blog/2025/ba... 🧪⚛️ #scicomm
I found out where all the seeds from seedless watermelons went---they're in NZ watermelons...
As this #quantumyear2025 concludes, I'd like to make one last suggestion that after 100+ years it might be time to talk about quantum mechanics as if it actually makes some sense now: haymanphysics.com/blog/2025/qcs/
🧪⚛️ #scicomm
In unrelated news, I have a new member of my plant family!
It is *such* a shame that alcohol just kills plants. A drunk Venus fly trap would be hilarious.
Perfect weather for the Upper Harbour regatta
Ah but exactly; if I understand correctly, here they're talking about non-uniformity in the distribution of types of stars (in terms of composition) so hetero- is appropriate. Good to know it's used somewhere, thanks for the reference
I suppose if you had a universe full of different types of particles you could (but wouldn't) call it heterogeneous.
Besides convention (^as noted by Harry) there's also implication. Hetero- suggests a difference in nature not just degree, and in this case we mean the degree of "lumpiness" in a single type of thing.
I have finally been driven to write this; please enjoy my rant about the "power" of entanglement in quantum computing. The short version is it's not a superpower, it's a computational *relief*. haymanphysics.com/blog/2025/badcounting
🧪⚛️ #scicomm
That's a very helpful post!
Particle physicists ⚛️, what do you think, is it about time we gave the Interaction picture a more catchy name?
My pick is the "Schrödinberg picture", but I will also accept the "Heisinger picture".
I like to call this a little random act of #scicomm:
Instead of cluttering up the root level of my new website, I put my publications in a blog post. But to justify putting them there, I also wrote a lay summary of each paper so there's something for everyone.
haymanphysics.com/blog/2025/pu... 🧪 ⚛️
Don't you just love that feeling when you're writing something and you figure out that *perfect* little connection you were looking for?
In other news, I think my next piece on time is going to be pretty nice.
And just the UI/UX clutter of these stupid AI things everywhere, ugh.
A cartoon ant is born, lives, and dies.
Just completely rebuilt my website and realized I never shared my article about time as a thing in physics. If you've ever found the language around time confusing, here's a little primer (and on a shiny new canvas). haymanphysics.com/blog/2025/ti... 🧪 ⚛️ #scicomm
My git commit says "Always forget to add new files..."
Just me?
Oh no, they've developed the technology to dramatically improve the animation quality of my childhood. This can't be good...
Proud of my American neighbours and friends today. It is in your nature to resist tyranny, you can do it.
#nokings
I don't know if this exactly makes sense, but I feel like Tokyo is *casually* beautiful.
Well now #duolingo... whose fault is that?
Just *felt* I had to grab one of these :P
Finally made the pilgrimage in the evening.
#gundam is my happy place.
