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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 24, 2011 14:39:25 GMT -5
I felt rather down about the state of society while lurking the PhD Comics phorum, and now that it's overrun by a spam bot again, (and considering that MIT's rejected me again from their graduate program), the message about the Phoenix Initiative here was well-timed. I hope that at least a few people here are eager to get going on some meaningful projects now.  (pretty please?) |
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Post by bombmaniac on Apr 24, 2011 14:51:09 GMT -5
soliek what was your username previously?
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Post by Draemora on Apr 24, 2011 15:51:40 GMT -5
I feel you... MIT rejected me, as well as several other very qualified students, from undergrad. I saw you are/were researching quantum computing... How's that going?
As for meaningful projects... We have some pretty cool things in mind.
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Post by Flags_Forever on Apr 24, 2011 20:51:49 GMT -5
Quantum computers? That's awesome!
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 25, 2011 22:02:43 GMT -5
soliek what was your username previously? Same username... I just wasn't doing much with it. I feel you... MIT rejected me, as well as several other very qualified students, from undergrad. Alas! It's going very well. Cool experimental and theoretical results abound, though writing papers and the review process for them is nonetheless grueling. I really wish I had a mandate to make videos teaching people about my research instead of papers, but I've got 2 more papers to finish writing before I can start pushing for that, haha.  Quantum computers? That's awesome! They are pretty awesome, especially now that they're working half-decently. It just took something like 7-8 years of R&D by a couple dozen experimental physicists and a whole lot of organization and investment to get them working half-decently, haha. ;D I wasn't involved with the actual hardware development, but I'm working on figuring out and trying out better ways to use them. There's nothing quite like predicting that a particular change in quantum physical effects will improve a computation and then seeing it work on a real chip. So far as I know, it's probably not yet faster than classical computation at computing things people care about, but it improves in leaps and bounds. |
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Post by Flags_Forever on Apr 26, 2011 1:49:24 GMT -5
Quantum computers? That's awesome! They are pretty awesome, especially now that they're working half-decently. It just took something like 7-8 years of R&D by a couple dozen experimental physicists and a whole lot of organization and investment to get them working half-decently, haha. ;D I wasn't involved with the actual hardware development, but I'm working on figuring out and trying out better ways to use them. There's nothing quite like predicting that a particular change in quantum physical effects will improve a computation and then seeing it work on a real chip. So far as I know, it's probably not yet faster than classical computation at computing things people care about, but it improves in leaps and bounds. I don't really know much about the subject, but it sounds fascinating! . Can you link me to a site where I can get a basic overview of the subject, in easy-to-understand terms? |
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 26, 2011 3:08:08 GMT -5
I don't really know much about the subject, but it sounds fascinating! . Can you link me to a site where I can get a basic overview of the subject, in easy-to-understand terms? Therein lies the big predicament. Everybody always asks for that, and I really wish that someone had already made such a site. I maintain that it's completely possible to make such a site, but alas, none appears to exist yet. This is partly because quantum computing is almost always expressed in unnecessarily complex terminology, and partly because I've been busy (and procrastinating) with important (and unimportant) projects (and YouTube-watching).  Tonight, I finally wrote a script for a video explaining superposition, one of the main concepts involved with quantum computing, in simple terms. I'll see what I can do about recording it soon and writing one on energy landscapes (a.k.a. Hamiltonians) next. My hope is that I can work my way up to explaining my most recent paper entirely via simple terms that friends and family could understand. It's actually really simple stuff, but to someone who doesn't know what the terms mean, it might as well be gibberish. In the mean time, I've just got two intro videos: |
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Post by Flags_Forever on Apr 26, 2011 4:54:40 GMT -5
I don't really know much about the subject, but it sounds fascinating! . Can you link me to a site where I can get a basic overview of the subject, in easy-to-understand terms? Therein lies the big predicament. Everybody always asks for that, and I really wish that someone had already made such a site. I maintain that it's completely possible to make such a site, but alas, none appears to exist yet. This is partly because quantum computing is almost always expressed in unnecessarily complex terminology, and partly because I've been busy (and procrastinating) with important (and unimportant) projects (and YouTube-watching). Tonight, I finally wrote a script for a video explaining superposition, one of the main concepts involved with quantum computing, in simple terms. I'll see what I can do about recording it soon and writing one on energy landscapes (a.k.a. Hamiltonians) next. My hope is that I can work my way up to explaining my most recent paper entirely via simple terms that friends and family could understand. It's actually really simple stuff, but to someone who doesn't know what the terms mean, it might as well be gibberish. In the mean time, I've just got two intro videos: I see. Oh well. Thanks for the vids, though, I enjoyed them very much! |
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