Why Quantum Computing is So Powerful | Because Science Live! 

Kyle's business card: Professional Nerd, Super Villain, Mane-tenance Expert, Resident of The Void, Friend of Nate, and Science Educator.

Hi Kyle, Thank you for answering my question! My classroom is your classroom (High school math and engineering) if you want to come up to Sonoma County. I can't technically make you a substitute, but you are more than welcome as a guest lecturer. Also, I could probably help with the education side of things if you want to write a physics curriculum. Hit me up if you're interested. :)

„Im not a Great teacher“ Dude you got a classroom of 1,2 million people. You are a great teacher.

lol when he says "stop wasting government tax dollars" I just imagine some employee slowly, shamefully closing the tab and resuming their work

4:40 for no intro. You're welcome. :)

With one of those bad boys I may be able to finally finish Minesweeper.

IBM came out and said they could optimize one of their super computers to run this in 2.5 days.

7:30 It is not "253" values for each qubit, it is two values for each qubit, for a total number of combinations 2^53=9007199254740992. The ^ here means that you take the power, you can't just ignore it and read it as 253. 8:10 That isn't right at all. The quantum computer doesn't check that the string is random, it only generates the string according to a probability distribution. You would have to use a classical computer to check that it is generating it consistent with the probability distribution. That isn't even possible for the full demonstration, you can only check for smaller test cases.

I love how IBM came out in a press release 2 days before google released their paper saying: hey... they say they did a thing that takes 10000 years.. we have a regular computer who can do it in 2.5 days. But IBM did give props to google for their 53 qbit operations. IBMs classical supercomputer could reduce the time for that equation from 10000 years to 2.5 days due to hierarchy of assets, software changes, using algorithms that they feel that google did not take into consideration. Wile it was still an achievement of immense proportions, I do believe that google overstated its accomplishment to get headlines.

I for one, completely support the idea of Kyle becoming the next generation of "Bill Nye the Science Guy" bonus points if you still sing it.

Quantum computing is so interesting. Imagine an AI with that computing power. I see nothing bad coming from it. No robot uprising here

Kyle! You don't give yourself enough credit!!! I desperately needed you as my teacher growing up!!! I always loved math and science, but rarely had the teacher with the PASSION to share, as you do. If you made a master class for students, I KNOW that I would by it for my kids and I believe that you'd find a lot of interested people. Why not turn your enthusiasm, passion, and likeability into something that builds your platform?! This has been a passion of mine for a very long time. I would absolutely love to collaborate with you and your posse on this.

"We are in a very fortunate period, where we are not getting ripped apart." -Because Science

One thing that helped me grasp time dilation, though I know it's not a super accurate depiction of it, is imagining that you're velocity through space and time is constant, any velocity you add to travelling through one takes from the other.

4:40 is where the fun begins

Thank you for clarifying how one would go about checking an equation on a new, unproven, device that's reportedly too fast to check with systems that have been proven reliable. I do wonder how you would check that figures are actually random? How do you prove that something cannot be explained other than by the list of values (which is how I would define random results")? On a side-note, IBM states that the equation would take 2 weeks to compute on current supercomputers, which seems more reasonable, than the figure quoted by Google, but would still make for a huge improvement in processing speed.

4:40 the show actually starts. Longest intro wait yet.

I've seen folks try to explain quantum super positions and Qbits but never really explain it in a way that most people could understand. If I had to explain it, quantum states are like having a 3D object but only looking at it one fixed perspective at a time. For example, consider a pyramid. From the top it would look like 4 triangles forming a square, from the bottom it would look like a square and from any of the 4 sides it would look like a triangle. The result of the observation varies depending on the perspective used. Also, if the pyramid is viewed from above shows a square then you know the view from the bottom sees the 4 triangles and the view from the sides see triangles. One observation gives 3 results - that's why quantum computers are so efficient. It's not that the Qbit is many things all at once, it's because the math being used offers multiple fixed perspectives that relate to one another.

me: gets quantum computer also me: uses it to watch youtube and anime in ultra mega hd on web pages that load faster then my eyes can perceive

I enjoy your enthusiasm for science and compassion to educate others. I love how genuine you are and have learned about my own curiosity of science through your videos. You do an amazing job keeping people focused on the subject on hand while providing information we may not otherwise have access to. Thank for what you and your crew do here. It's important work and it's needed.

The songs called Careless Whisper btw👉

Questions. How fast would you have to heal in order to feel yourself healing? And would it hurt to heal? Like say growing back an arm in only hours.

Hey Kyle, thanks for making such a great show: my daughter (5) loves watching 'the funny man' with me, and says she wants to be an engineer (and ballet dancer, ninja and teacher) when she grows up. I have a question regarding time dilation and Relativity you brought up on this show that I'm not sure I'm phrasing correctly, but is light itself 'younger' than what it is emitted from/reflected off? I.e. if a star is 130 light years away, is the light that reaches us 130 years old, but the star (x) years older?

8:50 you said you had great teachers growing up, this shows.You're very clear and concise with your teachings, showing true understanding of your studies and dedication to science. Thank you for all you do.

SETI will definitely greatly benefit from quantum computers. So will a certain evil genius.

11:57 I understood ear worms as a quirk of the brain relating to hating leaving things unfinished. It's one way of fighting procrastination is to start a project (but not so many that you feel overwhelmed), as starting a project makes you tend to want to finish it. The same thing happens with Ear worms: you hear a snipet of a song (usually the hook, as to what makes them so catchy is beyond me) your brain wants closure. Thats why when you listen to the whole song, you acknowledge it as the end of the song, you have closure. It's also really bad when you only remember one verse or even just the one piece of the song: you start looping. The weird thing is I believe some songs that fade out can get stuck as well, even when they end.

What you want money for? Trees!? Hell, I love those things. Done and done. 🌳

I love your response to the idea of self-devised curricula. As an introductory composition instructor in college, I've found over my (relatively limited) span of teaching that students engage a thousand times more with material I'm excited to teach. Department mandated material isn't problematic, but standardized education and expectations of basic classroom lesson planning is way more limiting than administrations might notice. Example: I base my courses on rhetoric and critical thinking around the plot synopsis of horror movies or literary compilations (Harry Potter is my favorite go-to for logic, for example). Students eat it up compared to other people in my department who teach the same tried-and-true lessons in the same course formats.

This is it. This is how it all starts. Only difference is it's called Google instead of Cyberdyne Systems.

I have heard in the past that the best way to get a song "unstuck" from your head is to hum the theme to the 80's show "Night Court". The theme itself is improvisational jazz, and (supposedly) because the theme is improv jazz, it doesnt follow the usual song structure that makes songs get stuck in the first place. So it acts as a way to clear your mental musical cache and reset. Dont know if there is any truth to that, just thought it was interesting.

I think of myself as more of a triumvirate: there's the consciousness that is who I think I am, then there's my subconscious and my physical body.

Speaking of substitute teachers, in South Africa where I grew up during the 90s and early 2000s, there was a channel called The Learning Channel where a couple of teachers took questions on the phone regarding sciences and math issues that children were facing. Covering everything from biology to physics, chemistry, maths- one entire session was even devoted to teaching someone the science behind an analogue watch. This was in post apartheid South Africa and the schooling system had a lot of under-educated kids to help and support- it was a hugely important channel and I don't think those teachers involved ever fully realised how important their contributions were. Before social media, they probably had simply no clue how many thousands and thousands of children would have failed their exams and not graduated. If you did that as a RU-vid channel or something like that, I would support it for the rest of my life like a religion. It would be worth it.

13:42 to 13:48 YES!!!! I, and everyone else watching these episodes, would love that! Please try to put it into action! By the way I think you're a great teacher :-)

On testing weird things, my grandfather ran a strange way by basically jumping with every stride instead of "Slapfooting" as he called it, took him a few steps to get his rhythm but could out distance most people in a very short time

Hey Kyle! Loved the Dr. Manhattan show! The part that peaked my interest was Dr. Manhattan quantum tunneling to Mars For a while now I've had this theory about a Cyclical Big Bang, where after the heat death of our universe and some unimaginably long period of time, say 2 googleplex years as a ballpark estimate, every particle in existence manages to quantum tunnel to a single point in the universe despite the infinitely small probability of it This becomes the next big bang and the cycle starts again, do you think if given enough time, monkeys and typewriters style, that this could happen? Also this leads to questions like, what if our big bang wasn't 100% of the universe but just a fraction? Could that solve the matter/antimatter big bang mystery? Are there other Big Bangs quintillions of light years away? In an infinite void of multiple big bangs has a universe ever restarted inside an already existing one? Could the opposite happen? Could every particle quantum tunnel away to different areas of space and thus our universe suddenly vanishes? What if only half of all particles did this? Granted the odds of those events happening during our time might be 13 billion out of 2 googleplex If the universe is cyclical then is there no beginning and it has just always existed? Because if something doesn't exist then it can't come into existence without the parts needed to bring it into existence having already existed Going too deep into the philosophical domain now Long Live Because Science! Your fellow sciencey communicator guy just without a youtube channel

So going to around 13:00 when you’re talking about self vs. natural laws of physics and the randomness of the universe, I have personally thought about that and do believe that it is the laws on the universe which controls everything that everyone says, does, or think. Very interesting topic to bring up, and glad that the viewer in chat mentioned it and that you talked about it

I tuned into the live stream just as Kyle gave his outro. Oh well maybe next time.

I could say I'm watching again this on my university supercomputer just because I had some test to run and I skipped one of them to watch this because you told me not to. I am not saying that because it would get me kicked out. But "hypothetically" speaking that is what I could have done, not that I ever would, but if I were to then "hypothetically" I did.

He looks like a Kyle, and a Chad at the same time. Is that quantum handsomeness?

23:34 "don't worry about the heat death of the universe thing personally, cause none one of us will make it that far" some billion years in the future, in the period of the beginning of the end of the universe, some random species could stumble upon this quote and find it either really amusing or extremely sad cause they didn't get to say stuff like that.

i wake up every morning with a song playing in my head lol

I'm pretty sure the reason behind earworms is a combination of the recency effect (memory) and the human desire to complete things. If you've ever paid close enough attention, you may notice that the song you have stuck in your head is the most recent song you've listened to but had to interrupt, maybe to go do dishes or something, and your brain really, REALLY wants to finish the song. But because most people can't actually get songs to play in their head, like actually hearing the entirety of the music, your brain loops around the song to try and figure out what's missing, when it's just the sensation of actually HEARING the song all the way through that needs to be fulfilled. But I may be completely wrong, it's been a while since I looked into it.

Time for a Kyle-Bait! Hey, Kyle! I love the show (and your hair. Not jealous at all) How would you describe consciousness and sentience?

The song is "Careless whisper" written by George Michael & Andrew Ridgeley was realeased on the album "Make It Big" by "Wham!", which George Michael was the lead singer of.

Y'all robbed me of the fun of saying "4:41 you're welcome"

You would actually make a great teacher, you are passionate and motivating in what you are talking, also, if you get a question and don't know the subjects in detail, you're honest about it and take the time to research the detail to give the most accurate information.

#teamtree we must plant all the trees.

I know you're super busy with the channel, but man, I would love to see you work with educators to come up with the "Because Science" curriculum for teaching Physics and other STEM subjects at the junior high and high school level. I had the misfortune of having a physics teacher that didn't have the ability to frame lessons in a context that was engaging and entertaining like you do on this channel every week. Thankfully, I had "Cosmos" and "A Brief History of Time" to give me what I wasn't getting in the classroom, but I would have loved to have had something like Because Science in my class. I think this is an area where you could make a huge impact, building on the amazing work you're already doing here - not to mention that so many of the videos you've already made could be incorporated into the lesson plans and expanded upon to include classroom exercises and experiments. (Though I don't know how all that would work with Nerdist/Legendary in terms of licensing content, but it's already free online, so seems like it should be okay?) Establishing a non-profit to facilitate all that and partner with school science programs would probably be the best approach. You might also be able to crowdfund an effort like that.

I was having such fun watching this that I got annoyed that it ended so soon.

More perspectives and resources are always welcome, but also the Crash Course channel started by the vlogbrothers has a number of videos for intro to physics, chemistry, etc. and were working on accompanying (or maybe done by now) supplementary teacher resources to go with the videos. A number of people have said their teachers use the videos in class and Hank has stated watch times normally go up around exam season. So I mean, you can do your own too because more voices are welcome, but it's not an untapped market. That channel was started from the first batch of RU-vid grant money.

Kyle: “Nate, what up?” Nate: *ads*

Thing about time dilation is that since all movement is relative if you were traveling away from Earth and at a speed where it was significant from the perspective of someone on Earth your moving at high speed and your clock is slower. But from your perspective your not moving and Earth is moving at high speed and their clock is slower. It's really counterintuitive. In the classic twins paradox the spaceship changes frames of reference to return to Earth and the net result is on Earth which hasn't changed frames of reference the net time difference when the two meet up is that the spaceship has experienced less time.

4:39 it starts

So, a thing to keep in mind about the speed of Quantum Computers (and why they used such an esoteric problem) is that these gains are only realized with equations that get exponentially more complex *over time*. In other words, it's not really the absolute speed that matters. For really "basic" stuff like computing oh gee say... graphics calculations for video games, quantum computers will probably do much worse than conventional computers. But if you have an equation where you constantly feed it new inputs and each input makes it harder and harder to solve, THAT is where quantum computing shines, because such-and-such number of iterations later, a conventional computer will be like "Oh god this is going to take ten thousand years now!" but for the quantum computer, the complexity is only rising linearly, due to how Qbits work. In that sense, demonstrating "supremacy" isn't what you think. It's not supremacy in the sense that they're demonstrating the quantum computer is always way faster than a conventional computer. The goal is to demonstrate that it can in practice actually turn a problem with exponentially increasing complexity into linear increasing complexity. This is also why it was so vague to the google researchers as to when that line was crossed, because that line is more like a gradient. An exponent of, say 1.1 takes a while to differentiate itself from a linear increase. Not that it needs to be said, but math is...complicated.

Love the channel, and the show, but did you really say,” Guilty Whisper?” I believe that was a bit “ careless.” 😉

This channel is getting more and more legendary as time passes. Really love your work and the passion you put into it. Keep it up and thanks for everything... because science.

Do you want Skynet because this is how you get Skynet

Time dialiation also changes around massive objects. An example would be traveling around a super massive black hole or going into a black hole. The closer you are to the schwarzschild radius the more time is dialated and past the event horizon you would more than likely see the end of the universe. Love your hair by the way.

15:55 You're talking about George Michael. Deadpool would be very hurt.

An odd thing I wish I was here to ask at the time. If you get more compressed and more dense as you get to the speed of light (as you cannot create mass from nothing), if you were to take something of significant mass to the speed of light, would you then have a light-speed black hole? Or would you start shedding your mass instead, breaking apart to allow physics to get you to that kind of relative speed?

The intro needs quantum processing. It's taking like 10,000 years to start🤷‍♂️

Heat death is where the universe reaches maximum entropy and there isn't enough energy differential to do anything. What you described is the big rip.

I want one for my gaming computer

The best description I've ever heard for a "spirit," I heard on Star Trek. Spock called it a "highly cohesive electromagnetic field," which is a perfectly valid concept of a "non-physical self" that's still made out of something science can measure, if anyone bothered trying.

"And if you are, stop wasting government tax dollars." LMAO

13:18, its been said that Quantum Field Theory (specifically quantum vacuum fluctuation) and the quantum mechanical idea that a quantum device (particle such as a photon) can be in a super position with probabilistic values of collapse into spin up or spin down are the very phenomena which give us a free will

Humanity: Invents Quantum Computer. Also Humanity: Still just uses it for porn and video games.

Just a couple off-the-top-of-my-head comments: 1. Kyle should have his own show on the Discovery Channel or Science Channel 2. Have you thought about explaining Time dilation with the following example: "Consider a giant transparent space train hurtling toward Alpha Centauri at near the speed of light. Because the speed of light can't change, light traveling outside the train and inside the train move at the same speed. Now consider if you could see light like a ball moving forward. Under the same conditions described for light (the same global speed), to an observer outside the train, that ball would appear to be moving in slow-motion. Because the speed of light is the speed of causality, this actually describes what an outside observer would see if watching the goings on in the train... Everything would appear to be happening in slow motion, as causality itself is locally appearing to slow down. - Hence, time dilation." 3. Have you thought about a collaboration with Mark Rober (maybe he could create something that you Because Science the shit out of) or with Good Mythical Morning (opportunity to reach a larger audience) 4. Kyle is an awesome Science Communicator.

“Stop wasting government tax dollars” *disappointingly closes tab on my supercomputer*

About your statement on determinism(?) you made me think of a quote from the original Bioshock from Andrew Ryan, "A man chooses, a slave obeys." That is why I like to think that we are more than just atoms.

Completely unrelated to anything but interesting fact. During the Manhattan project the amount of electricity used to produce the weapons grade Uranium that went into the Hiroshima 'Little Boy' bomb was over 100 times the energy released by that bomb.

Hi Kyle! I literally have an elementary question for you, as this question has been unresolved conundrum since elementary school. If molecules create heat as they move, why does wind feel cool? I understand that evaporation helps us transfer body heat to the air around us, but why do we not feel the heat of the molecules speeding up around us as the "air" moves from wind?.... BTW I started playing Commander in 2019 and my first deck was the Windgrace deck, and I have since built 3 separate from it, loved your episode with the Game Knights. Way to represent!

In case you are wondering what is the actual computational complexity of problems quantum computers can solve effectively: it seems NP-complete problems cannot be solved on quantum computer in polynomial time (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing#Relation_to_computational_complexity_theory ). However, there are some problems not solvable in polynomial time on classical computers which can be solved in polynomial time on quantum computers (e.g. integer factorization - see Shor's algorithm en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm)

Idea for an episode....how long would it take to clear the worlds landfills using mr. Fusion upgrade to all the worlds cars using rates of creation and milage based on back to the future II scenes. I hope you see this

Hey Kyle, so in quantum physics, particles have a "probability wave". I myself believe that people also have a sort of "probability wave" of their own, where who they "are" is the crest of that "wave" but there's still wiggle room along that wave. The further from that crest, the lower the probability is, but I don't think that things are as determined as you seem to believe.

Hey kyle, great show and nice hair. now on the last question at about 21:35 i think you explained the big rip, up to a point. i think heat death refers to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Basically getting the end of universe will come when by thermal equilibrium. since most of universe is close to 2 kelvin, then thermal equilibrium shouldn't be much higher than that. At least it wouldn't even be close to 0 Celsius. keep up the good work and the evil plots!

I'd really like to have an episode on the posited theories of what is "beyond" our universe. Is there anything "beyond" our universe? Are there other universes expanding towards us, like we are to them? Perhaps there is "infinite space" for universes to be born, die, the cycle of new universes is "forever (assuming time is a concept outside of ourselves)." Side note, I think black holes are punctures in our universe that swallow matter into such tight spaces, that when there is enough energy, matter, etc compressed, a hole is ripped through outside of our universe, causing a massive explosion (big bang) where another universe forms. I call this the Water-Drop Theory. When not enough matter is compressed, the black hole either: dissipates, or it expels all the energy from itself. I'm not even sort of a scientist, but the concept randomly came to me one day, and I thought it was a pretty good one.

Question about time dilation Couldnt time dilation just be an illusion because when you are travelling close to the speed of light the photons bouncing off of things would take longer to get to you to cause you are travelling at the speed very close to theirs. Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.

Hey Kyle, is it possible that the universe is larger than we think and there may be stars and systems farther than we can actually detect with current technology?

If i'm not mistaken the speed of quantum computers is only faster at paralel processing, so if it is used for something like watching a video it has the same speed as a normal computer.

I have a question: How can stars form at all since, 1) Gas contained in a tank under compression pushes out on all sides trying to get out and don’t form into tiny stars and 2) Space is a vacuum and doesn’t force gas together like a container would and even if it did, like a container, the gas would just try to escape rather than produce a star. Seems to me even under the weak force of gravity a star couldn’t just form on its own let alone trillions of them.

In a past video, Kyle came out and said (not in so many words) "Wombat turds are cool." (they are cube-shaped, and the reason why they are cube-shaped was discovered by a team of scientists who stuffed long balloons up wombat rears...they won an Ig Nobel for their work that year). I found something even cooler than that. In 1981, a russian submarine ran aground near a Swedish island that sparked off a 10-year flurry of mass foreign incursions into Swedish waters. As it turns out, these "incursions" were massive schools of herring communicating with each other by way of farting.

Actually you probably are the best teacher ever! You really are.. we'll all eight graders inside would love to attend that class especially when taught by you.. you KYLE!! Love the showwww!!!

Damnit, I only clicked on this to find out how we are utilizing quantum entanglement for computing and 3 minutes in Kyle's like "Ain't nobody got no time for entanglement." Maybe it'll be in Footnotes show

My physics teacher was absolutely fantastic. Shoutout to Mrs. Carver!

Google: Look at our revolutionary quantum computer. D-Wave: Hold our truck-full of empty beers.

Totally agree with your description of "who we are", the complexity of our brain is mind boggling! Gotta get technical on your description of the heat death of the universe though. You mention the atoms tearing themselves apart and not being able to form anything; but the heat death has to do with entropy and they universe expanding to the point of thermal equilibrium causing there to be insufficient energy to keep chemistry as we know it going. You kinda described the big rip

Isn’t usual bytes have same number of combinations? 1 byte have 2 combinations, so 2 would have 2^2, 3 then 2^3.

Thanos' agenda in Infinity War and Endgame 17:21. The gauntlet, the resources, the atoms, life unchecked. All of that Happy Meal stuff he was trying to sell to Gamora, Dr. Strange, and the Avengers.

Hey Kyle, I'm a computer scientist who focuses as a software developer in the industry. I did want to make a small correction here, though I don't know a huge amount quantum mechanics, quantum computing is not faster than classical computers. Classical computers can load instructions into RAM really quickly, and execute those instructions insanely quickly. Quantum computers do this much slower, but what they are good at doing is reducing the solution space down to a very small number. So in your example, let's say a classical computer could execute an instruction in one second, while quantum could do it in 5 seconds. For this math equation, the classical computer must execute 1,000,000 instructions... Which would take around 222 hours. But a quantum computer can reduce the instruction space to a much smaller space, say, 1000 instructions. So it would only take the computer 1.3 hours. So though the quantum computers are much slower than classical computers overall, for very specific problems they can be immensely useful. This is also why quantum computers will never replace classical computers in a general context.

I heard about the #TeamTree thing from ElectroBOOM, glad to see you jumping on it too

IBM states that the 10,000 year time is wrong, because Google only used RAM and not storage in their estimate. Using storage as well takes it to 2.5 days.

What did you learn in science today timmy? Timmy: I learned how captain falcon's falcon punch works and how to cook a chicken by slapping it.

I'm a bit rusted in quantum computing, but what I always found very funny about it is that it answer the question: "P=NP", with a big fat: "who cares!". Also it makes a lot of security algorithms obsolete, fortunately mathematicians already solved that issue.

Hay, ended up doing some math for question posed by a player in my dnd game. They wanted to know how many people would they have to kill to make a sword from the iron found with in them. I came up with 130 at the least assuming perfect conversation. I think this could be an interesting, yet morbid, question for you to answer. Plus, it would further lean in to your super villain set up.

I was kinda hoping for more on quantum computing and more specifically how qubits work as compared to traditional bits.

Guilty feet ain't got no rhythm. The autonomous system controls involuntary movements. It's a mind of its own that can disassociate, like a drummer moving his feet independently from his hands and yet stay in sync to rhythm. [think of quickly moving your hand off of a flame or dancing to the rhythm without thinking]

Regarding the heat death of the universe, do you think it is possible that the reason the universe is expanding faster and faster is that the shape of space itself is doughnut-like and matter is condensing on the other side of the doughnut where it will become so compact as to cause a new big bang pushing matter/energy back around the doughnut like sprinkles on over-melted icing in an unending cycle?

Writing this before watching the video, so not sure if it was pointed out, but Wired did a video where they explained Quantum Computing in 5 levels of understanding. It's a great watch if you're interested in the subject and want to know more about it, no matter how much you already know. Just search for something like "quantum computing explained in 5 levels". Should be one of the top results.

Afaic it isn't true that Quantum computers would be many orders of magnitude faster then classic computers is every kind of computational task, only for certain algorithms. I also remember hearing some expert say that there are a lot of standard computational tasks that a Quantum computer wouldn't be able to do at all, or would be slower at then a conventional computer. They are however really good at decrypting data. So there is a good chance that all the encryption and digital security algorithms used nowadays to protect data (passwords, https/SSL , currency transactions, Cryptocurrency etc) would become obsolete as soon as Quantum computers and the algorithms developed to run on them, would be at an advanced enough level.