A couple of years ago I got to push some trapped ion's around in the quantum computer under development at the University of Sussex [0]. Very cool, seeing the glowing ions on a monitor and moving them in 1-micron steps via the cursor keys.
You get to realise how sensitive this stuff is when you hear it took them 3 weeks to track down a single hair that was contaminating their (extensive) vacuum system.
That is apparently wrong [0]. I recently heard a podcast with some of the scientists involved. They were very frustrated with how hard it had been to get any attention at all for the negative result compared with the original research.
Pretty fascinating stuff, even if I don't get all of it. I wonder how much reliability and 'decoherence' and some of the other problems will improve over time?
There's a joke there somewhere about finding a dead/live cat when you open the hood, or broken/working computer, or something along those lines.
Thank you for keeping Hacker News a clean and a productive environment for rational discourse. I see you a lot across posts and I'm not sure how much automation you use, but it's clear that you put in an extraordinary amount of effort in tending this garden.
You get to realise how sensitive this stuff is when you hear it took them 3 weeks to track down a single hair that was contaminating their (extensive) vacuum system.
[0] https://www.sussex.ac.uk/research/centres/sussex-centre-for-...