Few people can say they’ve brought about a quantum leap in their field. But if all goes well for Chad Rigetti, this summer he will join them, by making the machine on your desk as obsolete as an abacus.
“We’re on a mission to build the world’s most powerful computer,” says Rigetti, “to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.” Cancer, climate change, world hunger — all targets of the technology Rigetti has in mind. It’s a striking vision for a 38-year-old farm boy from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, who once thought he would grow barley after high school.
To achieve his goal — creating the first commercial quantum computer — would amount to a revolution in computing. Conventional computers reduce logic problems to math problems, and math problems to a binary counting system: On or off equals one or zero. The time required to solve difficult problems has been getting shorter and shorter as computer engineers figure out how to make their on/off switches smaller, each year doubling the computing power contained within the same-size box. They now envision the day when they’re working on switches the size of atoms.
But that’s also the point at which they’ll hit a barrier, because subatomic particles behave according to the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. A single particle can be in two places at once. It can instantly affect another particle light-years away. And it can travel through insulation, so it’s hard to find when you need it.
AFTER MORE OR LESS BLUNDERING INTO A PHYSICS CLASS, RIGETTI FOUND HIMSELF LURED BY THE MYSTERY OF QUANTUM MECHANICS.
