Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything

by Michio Kaku

Ancient artisans knew that if clay were heated up to high enough temperature in a furnace, it would eventually glow brightly. It would start becoming red hot, then yellow hot, and finally bluish-white hot. We see this every time we light up a match. At the top of the flame, where it is coolest, the flame is red. In the center, the flame is yellow. And, if the conditions are right, the bottom of the flame is blue-white hot. Physicists tried to derive this well-known property of hot objects and failed miserably. They knew that heat is nothing but atoms in motion. The greater the temperature of an object, the faster its atoms move. They also knew that atoms have electrical charges as well. If you move a charged atom fast enough, it radiates electromagnetic radiation (like radio or light), according to the laws of James Clerk Maxwell. The color of a hot object indicates the frequency of the radiation. So, using Newton’s theory applied to the atom, and using Maxwell’s theory of light, one can calculate the light emitted from a hot object. So far, so good. But when the calculation is actually performed, disaster strikes. One finds that the energy emitted can become infinite at high frequencies, which is impossible. This was called the Rayleigh-Jeans catastrophe. It showed physicists that there was a gaping hole in Newtonian mechanics. One day, Planck tried to derive the Rayleigh-Jeans catastrophe for his physics class, but with a strange, novel method. He was tired of doing it i...