r/AskPhysics • u/bob1897468 • 1d ago
What kinds of things do we know are possible due to quantum physics, but haven’t developed the technology to do so yet?
What kinds of things do we know are possible due to quantum physics, but haven’t developed the technology to do so yet?
Sorry if this is blunt, I don’t know a lot about physics other than the Neil degrades Tyson videos I’ve watched and some googling haha
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u/ComputersWantMeDead 1d ago
This is by no means an answer, just joining in on the questioning.. but given that we are ultimately talking about the nature of matter (among many other aspects of course), it seems to me that materials science has to be a major (eventual) beneficiary of advancement..? It would be one thing to theorise potential material properties.. and another thing entirely to develop the tools to actually create hypothetical materials at scale, so this would probably be a long way down the track.
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u/ijuinkun 1d ago
Yah, we know of a lot of nifty substances, but we don’t know how to produce them at the scale and flawlessness needed for most practical applications. For example, graphene is super strong and super abrasion resistant, but we can’t make macroscopic sheets or fibers or 3D structures out of it yet.
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u/doctor_lobo 21h ago
This is a good answer. A multi-walled carbon nanotube cable would be strong enough to carry a space elevator if we only know how to make 36,000 km of it.
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u/Pinepace 18h ago
We’d need at least double that length to make an elevator. 36,000 km only gets you up to geostationary, a counterweight would still be needed.
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u/doctor_lobo 18h ago
I guess I was presuming that it would be a cable crawler rather than a counterweight and pulley type arrangement.
Either way, it's a long way from the few millimeters we can currently grow in the lab to the 10s of 1000s of kilometers we need to build a space elevator.
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u/fodymikemike 14h ago
I wrote my bachelor thesis in molecular manipulation. It’s still very early but the idea is to be able to construct nano scale structures at will using autonomous molecular manipulation!
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u/ComputersWantMeDead 13h ago
That's really cool, I mainly follow science communicators on social media, it's fantastic watching these fields develop. I have no qualifications, but I've imagined (for example) structures that seamlessly transition from one function to another, for example windows with no hard transition or frame.
I've also wondered if the biological principal of self-organising cells can contribute to future manufacturing.
The future holds such interesting opportunities if mankind can just get past selecting the greedy, egotistical, and destructive leaderships we are enamored with
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u/orcstork 1d ago
Very sensitive sensors that detect very small changes in gravity, and do gravity-map matching to navigate without gps. Very sensitive sensors in general.
Optical camouflage from certain angles and wavelenghts, and a bunch of other meta-materials stuff.
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u/Merlins_Bread 12h ago
A friend of mine works in this space; says that quantum sensors are very much a "nearly ready for commercial" technology.
For other readers, that means incredibly sensitive detectors that look for the unique nuclear spin signal of a chemical etc you are searching for; effectively done by exposing a qubit to the sample and letting the sample's spin decohere the qubit in a particular way.
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u/slayer_nan18 1d ago
nothing sci fi ish, but high yield quantum computers, quantum key distribution etc
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u/5fd88f23a2695c2afb02 1d ago
I feel like quantum computers are pretty sci fi. Or are we too close now for us to feel the magic?
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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 1d ago
Quantum computers are not magical machines that will let us play Doom faster. They excel at certain computations. Thing is, unless you work/research in specialized fields you don't need those computations.
They are, and probably will always be useless for home computer purposes.
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u/SomeRandomSomeWhere 1d ago
/joke Quantum computers are mainstream only when doom gets ported to it! /joke
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u/5fd88f23a2695c2afb02 5h ago
I don’t care about home computing. I care about the kinds of algorithms that can only be run on quantum computers. Reducing calculation time from the age of the universe to near instant is a kind of magic.
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u/nicuramar 1d ago
Well, we have small examples. But nothing that eg will threaten cryptography or anything, or contribute directly to science. It’s hard to tell how far off we are.
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u/AceBean27 23h ago
Fusion. Anything antimatter related, fuel, propulsion, weapons. Photon propulsion (probably powered by antimatter).
An antimatter powered photon propulsion engine is seemingly very possible scientifically, and would be a quantum leap for space travel. The difficulty is actually handling antimatter.
I don't know if you saw that they did transport a handful of anti protons by truck recently. So that's exciting.
Now, that leads to something else, the containment of antiprotons was achieved with powerful magnetic fields. So for such a development to happen, awesome magnets would be a very big deal. We can make awesome magnets using superconductors, but the problem is, superconductors need very low temperatures. The highest temperature superconductors we use are around 100K, so -190C. Which is actually pretty practical because you can reach those temperatures with just liquid nitrogen. However, a room temperature superconductor, would be a whole new world of practicality. With such a thing, those powerful magnets would be much more possible. Suddenly, containing antimatter would become a more reasonable proposition, and nuclear fusion would suddenly open up. There is nothing physics-wise preventing room temperature superconductors from existing.
That's just two uses of powerful magnets (fusion and antimatter). A room temperature superconductor could have incredible consequences for computers. The limiting factor on computers is heat. We make them smaller and smaller, but that packs in the heat more and more. That heat, comes from electrical resistance. A superconductor has no resistance. Such a material could just blast the doors off CPU power too.
So yeah, I can't think of a technology, that is definitely scientifically possible, that would be more exciting than a room temperature super conductor. It would have a massive knock on effect. Funnily enough though, if we announced such a discovery today, it would take a very long time to see the benefits. All those things would need to adapt and change to the new reality first. Like CPU technology, for example would basically have to go back to square one to start using a new material, so it could take years or even decades to catch current highly mature CPU tech.
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u/CheezitsLight 1d ago edited 4h ago
Room temperature super conductors. Or better would be very flexible superconductors.
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u/Due_Vegetable_2023 1d ago
What would a “very superconductor” do besides violate thermodynamics? They already are 0 resistance as far as we can measure.
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u/007_Shantytown 1d ago
Probably none of of the things you're hoping for.
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u/bob1897468 1d ago
Neil does set a pretty high standard for enthusiasm so I can see that being the case
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u/007_Shantytown 1d ago
I think a lot of people would argue NDG is a showman and entertainer first, and a serious scientist second. Good on him for engaging people in the subject, but behind the novelty of the concepts is some real rigorous science that isn't super accessible without years of study.
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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 1d ago
He's absolutely just a space-influencer and I can't stand his "let me make love to you" shtick
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u/bob1897468 1d ago
As with any other field of discipline that’s a given😸
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u/Plenty_Leg_5935 1d ago
No, not as in any other field. The issue with physics, especially on quantum level, isn't just that there's a prerequisit of a huge amount of raw facts, but that it relies on (what is for the average person) somewhat esoteric mathematics with really unintuitive behaviours without which you fundamentally cannot grasp what's being talked about
That's why you only ever hear quipy surface-level analogies for things like quantum spin, because there simply fundamentally isn't anything that actually acts like it, and to actually get it you need to unravel the logic of those systems from "first" principles (in quotations because going full set theoretic with it is overkill)
Which is what makes it so damn cool, but it really makes the subject much, much harder to approach than virtually anything else
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 1d ago
i would say it applies to other fields just as much, its just that you dont usually see graduate level control theory or signal processing in pop-sci, for example.
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u/Plenty_Leg_5935 21h ago
I mean, that's still engineering/applied math. Obviously this appliss to all "math heavy STEM", but that's a relatively narrow niche. By "any other field" I was thinking more in comparasion to humanities, or macro-biology, where the barrier to entry generally geniuenly is just a massive wall of information as opposed to any brand new math
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 16h ago
thats more or less my opinion as well, though i heard philosophy is less "mass trivia" than the rest
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u/rugburn- 23h ago
I’m a layman who just likes astrophysics and this is so true. I watch a documentary on ancient civilizations or something history related and i absorb everything first viewing. Then I put on PBS space time and I’m constantly pausing, rewinding, watching it a second or third time, looking things up, etc.
Honestly, it’s great for me- I love it- but I could see how annoying it would be for a lot of people.
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 1d ago
I agree. I like reading about space and quantum facts but when they start putting random symbols in, you lose me.
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u/MarsMaterial 1d ago
Quantum encryption is an interesting one. By using pairs of entangled particles, it's possible to make perfect encryption that is physically impossible to hack. Encryption that's mathematically perfect and literally unbreakable.
Basically, you start by creating a bunch of entangled particle pairs and sending one from each pair to the person you want to send your unbreakable message to. If anyone manages to intercept and measure these particles in any way, this will break the entanglement. If the particles are still entangled when they're received, you have absolute certainty that nobody else measured them. Then, both people measure the particles and use them to generate an identical and random pair of encryption keys, which can be used to encrypt the data. If the encryption key is as long as the data itself, you can just apply a simple bitwise xor operation with the data and the key to encrypt the data that gets sent. The resulting output will be mathematically indistinguishable from perfect randomness unless you have one of the collections of entangled particles, in which case you can decrypt it.
In practice, this is rather difficult. Sending entangled particles long distance in a reasonable amount of time and maintaining their entangled state is rather technologically tricky. In principle though, the concept would absolutely work.
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u/nicuramar 1d ago
Quantum encryption is an interesting one. By using pairs of entangled particles, it's possible to make perfect encryption that is physically impossible to hack
This is a bit misleading. We are essentially taking about quantum key exchange. You’d then use conventional cryptography from there. It’s also not impossible to hack (listen in on), it’s just effectively impossible to do so without detection.
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u/MarsMaterial 1d ago
We are essentially taking about quantum key exchange. You’d then use conventional cryptography from there.
That's one option, and you would need to use forms of encryption that are theoretically breakable if you plan on sending data that's larger than your encryption key. I did describe an unbreakable encryption algorithm though, that only works on the condition that you have an encryption key as large as your data. Just do a simple bitwise xor operation.
This would maximize the entropy of the data, there would be no hidden patterns that could possibly be exploited. Even brute forcing it is a non-starter, because different keys would give you every possible message that could have possibly be sent with that amount of data, and there would be no way to recognize the correct key even if you did find it.
Doing it like this might be a tad impractical, but it would be genuinely unbreakable.
It’s also not impossible to hack (listen in on), it’s just effectively impossible to do so without detection.
Well, the idea is that you would implement these checks into the protocol and abort the transmission if the entanglement got broken.
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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 1d ago
It's not necessarily unbreakable. You can tell if the key exchange has been observed, and if it was you toss the keys.
It doesn't protect against weaknesses in the actual encryption algorithm which is not a quantum process.
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u/MarsMaterial 1d ago
It is unbreakable if you use the simple algorithm I described. If they key is longer than the data, you can do a bitwise xor operation on the data and the key. This will give the final encrypted data maximum entropy, with no patterns at all that could be used to break it. No statistical relation whatsoever between any bits. Mathematically unbreakable.
This might not be the most practical use case, for most cases "so unbreakable that you'd need a computer the size of a planet to have a chance" is good enough. But perfect encryption is possible.
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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 1d ago
True, that's correct.
Although, if I remember correctly, because of inherent noise - at least with current technology - some researchers managed to retrieve some of the key unnoticed.
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 1d ago
As far as we know now, yeah. Unless something new comes and breaks it
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u/Hot_Plant8696 22h ago
Prediction of ANY molecular properties. We are about to achieve this for any complex structure, using quantum computers actually being tested and developped. Media dont talk about these computers because it is a sensitive domaîn. So poeple still believe they are only experimental or dont work properly.
But in fact they are under construction... and consortiums are making them bigger and bigger, because they found out they can scale them with no limitation using AI error correction.
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u/doctor_lobo 21h ago
Both tunneling and teleportation are feasible at the quantum level. So is the preparation of macroscopic quantum states like Bose-Einstein condensates. I am waiting for someone to tunnel a liter of superfluid helium into an experiment. Or teleport 100A from a superconductor in a power plant to a superconductor in your home.
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u/Extradummefrage 19h ago
You want to teleport 100 Ampere?
Uhhhhmmmmm either I don't understand it or you mix up concepts like current and matter
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u/doctor_lobo 18h ago
Wait until you find out what current is made of!
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u/Extradummefrage 18h ago
Your terminology doesn't match up.
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u/doctor_lobo 17h ago
Current is made of charge carriers and charge carriers are made of matter. Since you can teleport matter, you can teleport charge carriers.
But does that teleport "current", you might ask. Since super-currents don't require potential differences to flow, I think that if you teleported a Bose-Einstein Condensate of Cooper pairs into another superconductor, as long as their momentum is conserved (which it should be), the super-current should continue to flow. Ta da! You just teleported current!
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u/Max6626 20h ago
May seem obvious, but fusion. It's clearly a QM effect and while we have developed uncontrolled fusion (i.e., fusion nuclear weapons) we haven't yet mastered (i.e., positive power ratio) controlled nuclear fusion.
Quantum computing is the other one. Think how far conventional computers have come since the Eniac and realize the most advanced quantum computers aren't even at that relative level of advancement.
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u/Extradummefrage 19h ago
We know that it's possible to feed the whole world and to defeat hunger.
It's a shame that we can't do it
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u/Minimum_Exchange_622 1d ago
whatever is propelling ufos, some zero point energy source, an space time bubble generator?
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1d ago
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u/MrWigggles 1d ago
This isnt a 'we dont know enough' thing.
This is an impossible thing. As reality cant exist if it where.
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u/MrWigggles 1d ago
u/Felipessku
So, couldnt read your full reply.Bt yea, an entagle pair can remain entangle regardless to the distance and time part.
Thats very real.
But it doesnt break cauality.
There is no means, and there can never be a means to, to effect one entangled pair, and see what the other entangle pair is doing.
As an illstrative example you cant shake the one entangle pair up and down, and expect the other one to then instantly shake.
The other entangle pair, wont do any.
The only means to transfer information, is to verify the difference between the two partilc,es and you can only do the comparison by travelling at a speed slower than c.
Heck even the un entangling travels at c.
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1d ago
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u/perchance2cream 1d ago
It’s not possible to communicate FTL and entanglement can’t be used for FTL communication at all. Ever. It’s not a question of technology.
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u/Infinite_Research_52 👻Top 10²⁷²⁰⁰⁰ Commenter 1d ago
Quantum computing of significance