The Advent of Quantum Computing: Practical Implications and the Quantum Curious

Welcome to Impact Quantum, the podcast where we strip away the

hype and break down the real world impact of quantum

computing. No hand wavy mysticism, just data

driven insights, practical applications, and the

occasional existential crisis about the nature of reality.

Whether you're a quantum enthusiast, a weary tech exec trying to

make sense of the buzzwords, or just someone who enjoys the

idea of computing so powerful it makes classical bits weep, this

is your home. So grab your superposition

snacks and let's dive into the quantum realm where

uncertainty is not a bug, it's a feature. Impact Quantum

making sense of the quantum revolution, one qubit at a time.

Now here is ten seconds of dubstep.

Alright. And those ten seconds of dubstep can only mean one

thing, another Impact Quantum episode. But not just

another Impact Quantum episode. We are back.

We're relaunching the show with some changes.

And, one of those changes is now Andy is not joining us on this

episode. Andy will be popping in from time to time, but he couldn't make it

today. With me is, one of our

newer, folks here at Data Driven Media, Candace

Kahuli. Hello, Candice. Hi. How are you?

I'm good. I'm good. And this was really

you know, bringing this back was really kind of a,

a couple of months in the works, I would say. Because we were we

were talking about this, and Candace is a marketing extraordinaire, and she's,

joined us at Data Driven Media to kind of, you know, plot,

like, where do we take this from now? Right? Because the the main

podcast data driven, is pushing

eight years now, of existence.

Season eight will go into production sometime at the next

couple of months. Impact Quantum has had two seasons,

and we took a bit of a hiatus for a number of reasons.

And if you watch if you listen to the main podcast, you're you're aware of

some of those reasons. One is, I moved.

Then moving with children is very different experience than moving without children.

First time I've done it, and then don't recommend it to anyone,

honestly. You're laughing because, Candace is laughing because,

she's moved internationally with children, but that's, we'll get into that in a minute.

And, we have added to the family since then. We've

adopted, one of my wife's cousins

and, you know, having a

toddler and the terrible twos is a different experience now that I'm eight years

older. It's a bit different than the last

time. But also I think one of this was

Candace had me going through some of our, our

data sets on on traffic. And I noticed a

rather unusual, pattern, and that pattern

was that there was an uptick in

interest in quantum computing, both in

videos I posted on YouTube, on posts that I made on

franksworld.com, and on the downloads for the

podcast. So without further ado,

let me introduce let me have Candice introduce herself.

Hi. So I'm Candice Gilhooly. My background is in

marketing, tech sales, community

development, and I like to really

ride the line between being technically

literate and being a marketer. I'm always

interested in new technology. I was basically

born from technology with my father being an IBM,

quantum physicist and inventor for nearly thirty

years. So I've been surrounded by technology my whole

life and I'm obsessed. And I'm

not though the typical person who comes to

technology. I'm not a coder. So I try to understand

it from the outside in so that I can see how I

can use that technology to my benefit while

not necessarily being the one that's, you know, creating the algorithms

and writing the code. I mean, that's

fair. I mean and it takes a village too. Right? Like, not everybody

is needed to code per se. Even my own career journey, I started

as a coder. And, you know, now I do,

you know, I do lead kind of proofs of concept and things like that and

and and things like that. But I am also now more in the what they

call the technical marketing role. And it's kind of

like, you know, how do we take the marketing material we get from

marketing and convert it from something more than just architecture? Whether those are

demos, whether it's kind of, you know, developer advocacy or evangelism,

depending on how you wanna refer to that. And it it's

cool because I have a tinkerer's mindset. I think I've always

have. And, you know,

sometimes I think that, I like to joke I have

Schrodinger's ADD where it's undiagnosed. My

wife is convinced I have it, and but it's undiagnosed,

so I can both have it and not have it at the same time.

And it gives me a bit of of of an advantage that way.

And the uptake in quantum computing, I think,

is fascinating. I think a number of things have happened since we last posted the

When I was experimenting with a new format of having Bailey, our

virtual host, kind of read out the news and quantum news and things like that.

The uptake on those videos were were rather interesting. They were people either love them

or they hate them. There was no discernible pattern. I suspect it might

have been just search engine optimization magic, would

explain kind of why some some of those titles would pick up and some of

those didn't. But I also think it's time to kind of, you know, reset

the palette as it were. Right? Originally, this was a

podcast for engineers. Right? It was basically the idea of if you

have data scientists and, software engineers, how do you

shepherd them or guide them to this new world of

quantum programming. But then getting getting to talk

to you, Candace, and, you know, we did collab on a book,

sentientmarketingbook.com. There's my

official plug. But, the interesting

thing is talking to you and this

notion of quantum curious. And we also spoke to a number

of quantum startup founders, one in particular, what we hope to hear

from you'll hear from more in the future.

Is the idea that, you know,

going into talking to

spreading the good word, I guess, of quantum computing. Right? And, you

know, quantum physicists, researchers, they already know about this.

Right? It's really the the wider

audience that I think could benefit from learning what's possible with quantum

computers. Obviously, I think we're gonna, you know, stay true to our roots in terms

of reaching out to software engineers and developers. But I also

think that's a bit shortsighted by sticking to just that group.

And Candace, you're the one that introduced the concept of quantum curious.

Now before quantum before Candace answers,

she's being very modest. Her dad was a big quantum physicist

and early pioneer in

quantum computing. And maybe she'll talk about that.

But what to you means quantum curious? Like what because

I think that's really kind of our new tagline now is, you know, a podcast

for the quantum curious. So to you, what is quantum

curious? I think quantum curious is everybody

who genuinely, wants to understand

what quantum computing, quantum engineering,

the mechanics of quantum, what it's about. Why

should you care. And it's kind of interesting

because it's the first time for me something that is

so technical, I can look at

from an outside perspective that is completely non technical.

Like, people say quantum, they go, physics.

Like, you don't have to really understand physics

to

background and understanding, you know, what

technologies are important and then say, okay. Everyone's talking about

quantum. Well, like, well, what really is quantum?

Like, what does it mean? And what does it mean to

me versus what does it mean to someone like you,

Frank? And how we can come together. And we can

just go all the way down to the basics of it and talk about,

you know, cubits and and get get

all molecular about it and say, what does

this mean? What does this do? And when you look at it from the

outside, you know, and I, I talk a lot on my YouTube channel

about parenting neurodiversity, and I'm

really interested in strength based knowledge that

shows why people who think differently

are incredibly valuable, because that's just how

they think, and it makes sense to them. So quantum is

something that can be really made sense to people, for

example, who are on the autistic spectrum, or who have

ADHD, or who are dyslexic. Because

it's strange, but it's about how they think and how they make these

natural connections in their minds that the neurotypical

just can't make. They just don't see them.

And I used to always market myself and my skills

and tell people that I'm like the fixer's elixir.

Right? Like, I just always say this, like, I connect

really well with people totally authentically because I'm super

interested in what people do. But after I talk to you for a little

while, you know, my brain is a buzzing and it's

making these connections to other people that I've met,

where if you had a conversation with them, it could lead

to some innovation. And I might not have to

understand it, but I understand it enough to

know where these connections are happening. And that's what

brings me back to quantum because these ideas of

these cubits, the molecular level that they can change their positioning

and their entanglement, and people talk about chaos,

but then the clarity of moments that happen

where the genius rises, right?

That's what a lot of people who face neurotypical

learning patterns deal with. They have all this chaos, all

this information. Screens are lighting up thousands

in their minds at a time, but then they have to be able to

hyperfocus quantum on an idea.

And then all of a sudden, it becomes this this concept. It just

it totally forms in your mind, and then you understand

it. And there's this weird connection. I find it very

exciting. So that's my long answer.

No. That's fine. And, you know, and it's also, like, it takes a village. You

know, you're gonna need the marketers for these, you know, and and we've spoken

to you and I recently spoken to a number of of of

quantum startup founders, over the

years, over the two seasons, you know, spoken to a few more,

quantum guests, you know, that are, you know, influential in the space, whether

they're researchers, business advisors, or, you know, founders

themselves. And I think that one of the things that I don't think people truly

appreciate just yet is that if

you have some understanding of quantum computing, right,

you don't really need to have an understanding of quantum physics. Obviously, that helps.

But just like you don't need to be a mathematician or a mathematics

PhD or statistician to understand AI and work with

AI, market AI, I think the same holds true here. So, you

know, all these startups, you know, they're out there for quantum computing.

I haven't checked the latest statistics on, you know, how many

there are. But quantum computing is starting to become

something that people talk about now and not

just in kinda technical circles. Right? Obviously, I live in the Washington

DC area. So, obviously, there's the national security aspect

of it. Right? Part of it is, and if you want a video to watch

on this, there's a YouTube channel called the yFiles.

And they did an episode, we'll put it in the show notes, called the quantum

apocalypse. I think it's just a little too melodramatic,

but nothing in there was incorrect. Right? Everything in there was

factual. You know, at least, you know, not the conjecture stuff, but

it was basically talking about how, and I was explaining this to you. Right? And

this is what got me interested back in the topic again. So

everyone who uses encryption every day. Now encryption

used to be the stuff of kings and generals.

Not necessarily the average medieval peasant or the

average merchant. Right? But now with the Internet,

everything we do or nearly everything we do is

protected through some form of encryption. So whether you buy a book

on Amazon, whether you buy, you know, something on

Etsy or whatever, pay for your subscription to Netflix.

Your credit card, your data is protected, or at least it should be

protected through a basically through a

quirk of mathematics, a quirk of computation

and and mathematics. So the idea is that it's

hard to reverse factor. It's

hard to factor primes. So the short dollar store

answer or Timo answer, I guess, what what the kids say now,

is that it's very easy for you to

know what three times five is. What's three times five? It's

15. Now if I had asked, what are the factors

of 15? You'd have to stop and think about that. One, you have to

go back to math class and figure out what do you says factor? What does

that mean? What does that mean? Not fear factor like Joe

Rogan. But, basically, the idea of, you

know, what parts of numbers multiply to make another number.

Right? So multiplication is easy. Reverse fact reverse doing

that in reverse is a lot more computationally difficult for both

the human mind and current day com computers,

which is something that RSA and most forms of

encryption that we use in our daily lives takes advantage of that

fact. Quantum computing

turns out might be able to do that a lot faster to the

tune of minutes as opposed to either years or thousands of

years. That could have

severe consequences for commerce, national

security, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So one of the interesting things

about encryption in general,

is the idea that if it encryption

doesn't have to secure something forever. It just has to

secure something for a set period of time. Okay. Right? So

if if somebody's able to break my credit card number and it takes them,

say, a hundred years, well, certainly not my problem anymore.

Right. Right? If

it takes them a year to do it, well, it becomes my problem.

Mhmm. Right? And there was an interesting quote. I believe it was from,

might have been Abraham Lincoln when they were trying to

decode ciphers and codes from,

the civil war. Mhmm. And it was basically it took somebody,

like, I don't know, a year to decode a message that the confederates

had had said. And it was kind of like, well, we really need this

information faster because this already happened. And I could be

misremembering it or fusing things in my brain because, hey, that happens.

But it's the notion that time is really a crucial

factor in encryption or security around encryption. So

if you come up with some kind of way, you say, well, you know, it'll

take a thousand years of compute time to reverse engineer this.

Even if advances in compute speed

proceed like we've seen with, you know, personal computers over the last, you know, how

many decades? Moore's law for the for those kids at home,

one of the actual term. It's the idea that processing speed will double somewhere

between every eighteen to twenty four months.

this will take, you know, a hundred years to break, even if there's some kind

of radical improvement over the next two years,

four, six, eight, ten years, it's still

within a certain margin of

safety in terms of being that data being able to be decrypted.

Quantum computers could turn that from, you know, say, we get it

down from a hundred down to fifty, down to, you know, maybe thirty

years. It's still, you know, safe depending on what it is. Right?

Obviously, if it's information, you know, around secret nuclear codes, that's a

different story. But if it's around my credit card number, if it's

broken in thirty years, you know,

that's a that's a problem that future Frank will have to deal with. Right?

Obviously, if it's a hundred years, yeah. I'd like to think future Frank

will be around, but, you know, that is

double the lifespan. Yeah. Quantum curious Candace is not gonna be

here in a hundred years. Quantum quantum quantum computer is, curious Candace is not gonna

be there. But if a quantum computer could do it potentially within

minutes Yeah. Which is what we're looking at through the implementation

of something called Shor's algorithm. And what's interesting about

Shor's algorithm now we're gonna have to pull up the Google to figure out

exactly when this would came out. But Shor's algorithm

was created not last year, but

this was,

1994 is when this came out. So

what's particularly fascinating is a lot of

quantum computing researchers like your dad were able to kind of

work out these algorithms and thoughts on the chalkboard

or whiteboard, before the machines were built.

And I think that's fascinating. And that gets into somewhere else. We can go down

deep rabbit hole, like information theory versus, you know, how we got to computers

because people were were were contemplating binary encoding

before there were really systems that took advantage of that.

And we're seeing the same thing with quantum computing, which I think that

typically history, if it doesn't outright repeat itself, it certainly rhymes.

And I think we are at a point, an inflection point with quantum computing,

where we are really on the cusp

of something big. Whether that'll happen this

year, whether that'll happen in five years, or if you wanna go, you

know, kind of ruin everybody's day like Jensen Long did. Say it'll

it could take twenty years. We'll talk about that, I guess, in a future

episode. But it it will happen, but I

think we're really at an inflection point because a lot of innovation is being done.

Willow, the Google research project,

that, proved did some quantum computations,

that what was it, Candace? Like, something like 13,000,000,000,000 years or something like that.

Yeah. We're done in, like, ninety seconds. Something like that. Right. Right. Absolutely.

Yes. Now and then they also said, well, maybe we're

tapping into parallel universes and things like that. And who knows if that's

true? Who knows? Right? But I think from a practical point of view, if you

wanna step back and be quantum curious, not necessarily into the physics of

it per se. Mhmm. But I think there's a story there. I mean,

what if, you know, trillions of years of compute

could be done in moments or minutes? Well,

certainly, that rains on the parade of every crypto cryptographic algorithm that

exists today. So quantum canvas, quantum

canvas may not be around in a hundred years.

But, you know, if you can do trillions of years of computation in

in in the span of, you know, ten minutes or less, then clearly, that's a

problem. Right. What does that mean? Now,

obviously, there's more to it than that. Right? So one of the interesting things

about this is, that once you kind of delve

into the quantum rabbit hole, it gets pretty deep.

And what's exciting about this isn't so much being worried

about breaking encryption or knowing credit cards or state secrets quickly,

Although that is a point of concern. I think the

exciting thing is what this could do for the environment.

Right? So if you look at the

humble plant, right, it could do a

number of things that science has really, I wouldn't say struggled with, but

takes a lot more effort to do than necessarily a

plant could do. One of those is nitrogen, pulling nitrogen out of the

air, which if I remember my high school biology, it's something

called the process called nitrogen fixation. Okay. It

was not until I think it was a German guy,

the Huber process.

Haber process. It's also called

the Haber Bosch process, which basically takes

nitrogen in the atmosphere, which remember, the atmosphere is

80% nitrogen, 20% everything else, mostly oxygen.

So it should be theoretically easy to just grab nitrogen out of the

air. Turns out it's not. And there's many chemical

reasons. And last time I took a chemistry class,

Kurt Cobain was not only alive, but he had not become famous yet.

So Okay. Okay. But the short of it is that the way

nitrogen exists in the atmosphere, it's very hard to pull that out.

Very strong chemical bonds, and it wasn't until,

the nineteen hundreds, something like

1918. It was a direct result of World War

one, that he that this was figured out

because nitrogen is very important in explosives.

Yes. Which if you are a country at

war, being able to make explosives, kind of

important. Right. If you are a country at war,

and you are blockaded from any other external sources of nitrogen,

or available nitrogen, that's a problem. That was a problem for, the

Germans in World War one. It's also

nitrogen turns out is important for,

agriculture. Growing, getting more plants out

of, to grow more food out of the same plot

of land. Right? So what, but it turns out

that the Haber the Huber process, the Haber process I'm totally

mispronouncing it. The Haber process, is very energy

intensive. And some people estimate that about a

third of the world's energy use.

Is it for GPUs? Is it for training LLMs? Although maybe

that'll change sometime this year. It's to

create nitrogen for fertilizer

and presumably explosives too. Right? Right.

Okay. So what if now

plants can do this entirely on their own, like seeds, bacterium in the

ground? They can totally do this on their

own. How are they able to do it? Because they don't have

mass factories in them. Right? Right. How is it able to do

it? So you have the potential of if you

can do it with the scale of energy,

or, you know, reduce the or increase the efficiency to the point where it happens

in nature. Right. You could have up to a

third more of the energy production in the world

Either Be used for other things or not at all Right. And

these do tend to be very carbon heavy things, which is a concern for those

worried about global warming if you're not worried about global

warming then, you know imagine if one third of the fossil fuels in the

world were now available for other uses. Costs would go down,

well, not immediately, but pretty quickly. And, and that's what, you

know, when you first started saying environment, my head immediately went

to, you know, what can quantum do? It can obviously

do better climate predictions. Absolutely. You

know, taking in the data and really improving the

accuracy and forecasting. Optimized

energy. Quantum algorithms could optimize the power

grids, reducing energy waste, and

working on improving renewable energy integration.

Right? Absolutely. Demand prediction. I mean, the list

goes on. And here's something, Candace, that that that and

I'm kinda passionate about. Like, so I had I built some solar

panel generators and stuff like that. Right? And it was really

disappointing to find out that solar panels are

only, very not very minimally efficient.

I mean, talking like a third efficient. Like, so a

third of the the energy just doesn't get used. Like, can you

imagine? You know?

No. That's not what I would be thinking at all. So,

obviously, because of various,

physics reasons, it'll never be a % efficient. But according to

my hastily typed in research,

a third is actually pretty generous. Most of residential solar panel

systems have efficiencies between

19.721.6%. High end,

high efficiency panels can get up to 23%. That

means that roughly, if you can go to the store or buy it

on Amazon, the solar panels that you have are basically throwing

away four fifths of the energy that it's getting from the

sun. Good. Yet

plants do a pretty good job of doing this efficiently.

Plants plants basically are you know, leaves on plants are

effectively miniature natural solar panels. What they do

is photosynthesis, if you remember from, learning as a kid,

takes carbon dioxide out of the air,

water, and sunlight to break apart the water molecule

and some of that carbon and then drop it into

basically sugar molecules. Mhmm.

Plants do it on their own without being asked.

Quietly. How do they do that? Right? And there's a lot of things that I

think chemistry hasn't figured out because it's very hard to simulate molecular

chemical interactions. In fact, there was, talking about how

caffeine I think it was simulating the caffeine molecule, which is a relatively

simple molecule as as these things go, you know,

obliterates any computational capacity we have today,

which is amazing to me. Right? And all of these

things could be better simulated through quantum computers.

So we could get more efficient solar panels. Right? So it could

maybe get 80% of the sunlight from

it. Right? Because of the pesky rules of thermodynamics,

we'll never get a %, but 80% is way

better than 20%. So you, you know, you can just imagine that all

these massive solar farms that that that are there,

this is what really annoyed me was like, wait a minute. So like, you know

only in terms of the energy that comes from the Sun and a lot of

solar panel enthusiasts Will talk

about how much energy we get from the Sun and it's enough to power, you

know Everybody on earth or something like that for so many hours

per per per day come in here come from space

But you know if you're only capturing 20 of it, that's a huge

opportunity to increase that Quantum computing could help us

find these ways, do the material science work to get

better materials at this, as well as other things, performance

in, you know, energy efficiency and, you know,

material science. Right? Like launching rockets into space. Right?

We're pretty much at the at the outer edge of what our material science can

do, for, you know, dealing with pressure, heat,

and extremes, and things like that. What if we had ways to

synthesize materials or or find out how do we get to that point?

There's also the opportunity to optimize the power

grid and optimize power delivery systems. All sorts of these

problems. Well, quantum computing alone will solve them. They

become far more computationally approachable.

It's the tool. It's it's it's not gonna change it, but it's the tool that

you use, you know. And already, you know, in different

sectors, this type of,

probabilistic mentality

is already in play. Like Right. You know, like, you have to think

that in the finance sector, the quantum probabilist

theories of of determination of where something is gonna go as absolutely

got to already be in play. It it might be

completely beyond what we understand, but, you know, based upon the

theories of where something is supposed to go, the probability of it,

you know, that's how they're making some decisions out there that are going to affect

everybody. Like, there's different sectors that are already incorporating

this kind of mentality as we speak. So

it's important for us to grasp as much as we can from

just from the start to see how it can make things better.

Interesting. I think. Right? Yeah. I mean, it really is.

And, it it's fascinating to see

how we can get to more efficient systems, whether or not,

you know, what the specifics are around plants and their efficiency, how much

solar energy they get, I think, varies on

species and and things like that. But it can we can

do better, I think, is basically it. We can do better in a lot of

ways. And what's interesting was I saw a post today on LinkedIn where

they had said, something to the effect

of, you know, the top quantum companies or something like that. Not

stardust, but companies using it. Curiously, a

financial institution was number two on the list and has been number two on the

list for quite some time. Mhmm. So if I find that cause you know what

happens when you refresh the page or whatever, the the Yes. Post is

gone forever. Right. So I need to dig that up. But I mean,

that's fascinating. So, you know, simulating markets, simulating

risk, simulating supply chains could be done. You can do it

today with conventional systems. But again, if if it takes you, you

know, it takes you, you know, six months to

do a computation to calculate what the weather's gonna be tomorrow.

It's not really useful. And I think yeah.

But to determine kind of, you know, when this type of storm is

headed this, you know, headed into this type of area during this type of

season, you know, can mama go take a trip to Punta Cana? But this

is this is important stuff to know. No. Exactly.

Right. These are the types of simulations where

if you could do them today, you won't get them in time. You won't get

the answers in time, or they're just computationally expensive, expensive to the

point where it's just not worth doing it. It's not worth doing. Exactly. And that

that's that has to change. Absolutely. Right? And I think we

really are on the cusp of these things, changing. I

think it's not that far off when,

you know, I don't think we're

we're not imminently going to get a, you know, a little device on

our, you know, the next iPhone isn't gonna have a Q tip. You know, it

won't be called the Q phone. Right. But,

we will get to a point where, you know, these will probably exist in

servers and data centers for the near future, but it's not

impossible to imagine you could have some kind of quantum sensor or

quantum, device or chip on

some future mobile device. Probably not in the next five years.

This will take a while, I think. But in terms of practical quantum

computing being in the data center, I think a lot of that hint

to to to quote Jensen Huang,

he, smart guy, but he also has a bit of a, you

know, he also sells competing equipment to do

parallel computation, which he would it would it would behoove him

for this to take longer than, and and five

two years. Right. It would behoove him to to kind of rain on people's

parades. So I think that

the when you'll see practical quantum computers in the data center, I

think hinges very much on what your definition of practical

is. If your definition of practical is, you know, you just go,

you you stack it and rack it like you would in a typical data

center, or you have something that can do this

on, you know, have something

in your phone or or something like that. I think that might be a ways

off. But I think in terms of it being something that

anyone can access through, you know, some kind of cloud service, I mean, you can

kinda do that now. Right? There were a lot of

limitations around it, but, you know, if you go back to the early days

of computing, so were

computers. Computers were custom built. It was really only IBM that kinda said, hey. You

can buy a computer, put it in the box. And I say box

like a box truck. Right? And you would ship it to

your office and you would install it and things like that. But,

I think though, you know, we kinda have that now,

and I think we're really at that that mainframe era of

of of quantum computers. Right? Or maybe even earlier than that or around

the same time where you have transistors. I think it has I think it's gonna

be a necessity thing. I think the first, you know, major sector

that is gonna need it the most might just break

through. Yes. And, you know, like and I think that

there's so much, you know, quantum sensing that

you could do for environmental monitoring. Like, you could be

looking at greenhouse gases and water quality, you

know, deforestation prevention. Like, there's just, you

know, things that that are really practical. I mean, look what look at what just

happened in LA. Right? Yep. And we're talking about,

you know, I think they said, like, 10,000 homes, but it's

over a trillion dollars worth of real estate.

You know, anything that is going to work, you know, to

help, I guess, even insurance companies to continue

to last. Like, there's no way some insurance companies aren't gonna

totally go belly up over all of this. Right? And a lot of them had

pulled out because they had kinda done the math and they they were like, They

can't survive. Us for us. And my art goes

out to a lot of those folks because Oh, absolutely.

You know, they bought into the California dream not realizing that, you know,

hey. It's either gonna burn down or get flooded and Or

shook or shaken to death. Shaken to death. Absolutely. Or shaken. And and that's

and that's the thing, like and so I kind of wonder if it's, you know,

what's hap I mean, lately, it's the environment that's been attacking

us the most in terms of, you know, these massive

floods that people are losing their homes, these mudslides, these

fires, all of the all of the

tornadoes. I mean, Tornado Alley is, like, twice as

big as it was when we were growing up. You know what I'm saying? Like,

so I think that the the financial

outlay that is happening because of these disasters, it it really is

gonna behoove certain sectors to kind of push

forward and get ahead of themselves a little bit to realize how can they

can save themselves. Right? Well, absolutely. Plus, we're also

building in places where there weren't population centers before. Right?

Florida being a big example. Right? Florida used to not be

a major population center like it is today. And, you know, they

are very vulnerable to hurricanes. Right? Absolutely. Even if they

Go ahead. No. Even if, like, the the the the if you had the same

number of hurricanes standard over time, the damage amounts are gonna go

way up because more people live there. You know? And

it's kinda like we didn't, you know, it's basically the unintended

consequences, you know, in terms of,

of how people develop these properties. Right? They don't think about,

like, you know, it's the insurance company's problem. Well, now I think a lot of

these things are coming too. And, you know, somebody was on TV

basically saying, you know, LA is a city built in desert

on top of earthquake faults and fire zones. Like, what did you

think would happen? Right. You know, maybe maybe it's

not just hurt. Maybe it's not just climate change. Maybe it's,

you know, we gambled for so long. We had a we had such

a winning run. We didn't realize we were winning. Right. And now it

starts. Now the the odds eventually catch

up with you. I mean but, again, these are all things that you can kind

of at least you can't stop, but you can at least be more aware

with better computational tools like quantum computers.

And I think it's it's fascinating to see how this will go. And we didn't

even really mention quantum sensing, which I'm not

I I I can't separate what's woo woo versus what's real, but it's the

idea that you can kind of do this. You can fit

you you can basically get extra

data from sensors that could pick up quantum states

through through other things. I'm not totally an expert on that. But what what's quantum

sensing to you? Oh, you know, I thought it really had to do with the

idea of the the determination and the detecting

factors that, you know, you could use quantum science

behind to help with,

again, monitoring a certain type of system.

So, no, I wanted you to help me more on the quantum sensing. So

I have, ChatGPT. Basically, give me a a one

sentence thing, but it's basically getting extremely sensitive measurements of

physical quantities such as time, magnetic fields,

temperature, electrical fields, pressure, and even gravitational fields.

So it's basically turning up the sensitivity of our existing sensors,

sensing capacity to 11. Okay. It reminds me of the guys that

were, like, that, like, chase that chase the, that chase the storms.

And they're getting all of the most raw

hot data you could possibly get by being in the middle of it

all. So yeah. Okay. So that's

exciting. So that's, like, that's also a thing. And I think, you

know, we're focused, you know, on quantum computing, but there's also probably

gonna be adjacent

technologies to this quantum sensing. Right? Building these quantum sensors and things like that. There's

also an interesting concept called quantum entanglement. We did mention

this before. And you wanna explain that real

quick? Well, quantum entanglement, I

believe, had to do with the the the state

of all of the qubits and how they're moving

around in every direction at the same time and how they're relating to each

other. Why don't you give me a little bit

more? So sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot there. That's

okay. That's okay. But it's the idea that you if you can

somehow untangle two particles, whether they're in the same room

or on other sides of the universe, you change the state of one, you all

instantaneously change the state of the other. Now there is

some it did that violates many rules, not the least, which

is, at least conventional rules. Right? Like,

it's Einstein mocked it to a point. Spooky stuff. That's the spooky

stuff, spooky action at a district. So he actually used that as a very

pejorative term. Like, he was, like, making fun of it. But

it's the idea. Now there's some debate over and we had one of the we

were talking to some expert on those. And I was like, well,

you know, if you look at it from one angle, hey,

that's like Star Trek. You can get, you know, communication faster than the speed

of light. Right? But that alone violates many,

many rules and upsets a lot of people. Right? But even if that's not the

case, even if it doesn't go faster than the speed of light, anyone

who who has a cell phone and gets a dead spot

knows the frustration of having poor signal. Theoretically,

if you had these, you know, entangled particles, you could

have basically a cell phone or some communication system

that would work anywhere. I mean, that's better than five g.

That's better than six g. I mean, that's, like, 10 g. You know what I

mean? So Right. That alone would be worth it. And I could also

imagine it's not hard to imagine maybe because I live in the DC area. Right?

The defense implications of this. Right? You can have submarines that can have high

fidelity, high bandwidth, communications

that would not be blocked by oceans or possibly not even detected

by, any other, you know, adversary.

I mean, it it boggles the mind. And I really think

we're on we're really, I think, at the precipice of this. Right?

Because everything we, you know, we call them electronics. And, basically,

your your phone, your computer, your

television, your car basically has

electrons running around in a maze that do

things. That's ultimately how all of these things work. It's basically,

you know, circuits printed in

silicon. Mhmm. Right? And that's how our world

works. And it's gotten us pretty far,

but we're pushing the point of engineering where

We can't really take it much further And it's been a good

run. It's been almost one hundred years So this

really could be Obviously, there's a lot of engineering

concerns that that have to be worked out error correction being one of them We'll

get into that in a future episode. Why that is and what

why that's important and why right now it's a limiting factor.

There's enormous potential here, and I think anyone

and everyone should be quantum curious because this is going to have major impacts from

the price of gasoline to how effective

your, solar panels are to your

batteries. Right? We mentioned material science. Right? One of the big problems with renewables

is how do you store the energy? Right. Battery technology,

as anyone at the cell phone knows, stinks. Yeah.

It's true. What if we can get that better? What if we could get that

cheaper? What if we don't have to rely on these rare earth minerals to

capture and store this information? And what if we can make it more efficient?

All these things could be improved upon

by quantum computing.

I I was very excited by this conversation. I

can't wait to delve into so much more. I'm I'm

just I'm even more excited than I was before we started.

And you know how much I've been into this lately. Absolutely. Absolutely. So

I'm looking forward to exploring the space with you all. And, you know,

we're gonna get some startup founders on here, but we're we're gonna keep

the focus less on the engineering, although we will bring

up those engineering ones. And just as a reference in the in

the pre in the what Bailey had said was talking about Schrodinger's, we're

reading the complexity of each show from zero to five Schrodinger's.

And it's the idea that, you know, zero is pretty much, you know, you can

talk to your grandma about it. Right. Five is you

probably would want to take migraine medicine

and get a couple of PhDs in there. I think mostly we're gonna have two

and three. Right? With the occasional four and five. But I also think that

the economic implications of this, the social implications of this are

enormous, and I think we can't ignore that. I completely agree. I think

it's gonna be exciting to talk about, to be able to show how much it

expands into other aspects of our world, you know,

both personally, you know, and professionally, and to show

what we all can gain from it. Absolutely.

That's a wrap for this episode of Impact Quantum, where we take the

uncertainty out of quantum computing. Well, as much as physics

allows. If you enjoyed this dive into the quantum realm, don't

forget to like, subscribe, and share because quantum effects

are better when they're observed. Have questions, feedback,

or a quantum paradox you'd like us to untangle? Reach

out and we might just collapse the waveform in a future episode.

Until next time stay curious stay entangled and

remember just because we can't measure something doesn't mean it's not

real. Impact quantum demystifying quantum one

qubit at a time.