My old college buddy Dinesh pointed me to the blog of a company, D-Wave, that is trying to make quantum computers commercially available. That statement alone nearly triggered my brain’s Quantum Computing Bullshit Detection Nodule,^[1] but Dinesh says that he’s met some of the employees and he thinks they might be the real deal. They’re trying out an alternative approach to quantum computing called adiabatic quantum computing, which they believe is more likely to meet with success than the “traditional” approach. It’s a hard problem, and I wish them luck.

Linked from the D-Wave blog, there’s an interesting paper on arXiv called “NP-Complete Problems and Physical Reality” [PDF]. It’s a more layperson-friendly piece than your average physics journal article, but I still only understood a small fraction of it. This math-y stuff is getting harder every year. Still, I thought it explored some fascinating, if somewhat deranged, physical concepts. I particularly liked the discussion of time-travel computing and its close relation, “anthropic computing”:

“There is at least one foolproof way to solve 3SAT in polynomial time: given a formula phi, guess a random assignment x, then kill yourself if x does not satisfy phi. Conditioned on looking at anything at all, you will be looking at a satisfying assignment! Some would argue that this algorithm works even better if we assume the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. For according to that interpretation, with probability 1, there really is a universe in which you guess a satisfying assignment and therefore remain alive. Admittedly, if phi is unsatisfiable, you might be out of luck…”

1. Conveniently nestled against the larger and more highly evolved Nanotech Bullshit Detection Nodule.