Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything

by Michio Kaku

As spectacular and powerful as the Schrödinger equation was, there was still one important, but embarrassing, question. If the electron was a wave, then what is waving? The solution would divide the physics community right down the middle, pitting physicists against one another for decades to come. It would spark one of the most controversial debates in the entire history of science, challenging our very notion of existence. Even today, there are conferences debating all the mathematical nuances and philosophical implications of this split. And one by-product of this debate, as it would turn out, is the quantum computer. Physicist Max Born lit the fuse of this explosion by postulating that matter consists of particles, but the probability of finding that particle is given by a wave. This immediately cleaved the physics community in two, with the founders of the “old” guard on one side (including Planck, Einstein, de Broglie, and Schrödinger, all denouncing this new interpretation), and Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr on the other, creating the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics. This new interpretation was too much, even for Einstein. It meant that you can only calculate probabilities, never certainties. You never knew precisely where a particle was; you could only calculate the likelihood that it was there. In some sense, electrons can be two places at the same time. Werner Heisenberg, who came up with an alternative but equivalent formulation of quantum mechanics, w...