God damn it, don't tip the table if you don't want it to fall!!

oh thats quite alright, and it was really alright, always a pleasure talking to someone willing to listen.

The computers themselves don't work on quantum tunnelling, that's the thing that limits our current computers to being above a certain size, if the transistors get too small they start to experience quantum effects, and therefor let's electrons pass through using quantum tunneling, making them useless since they are just switches and a switch is useless if it lets electricity through when you don't want it to. Quantum effects can be proven, such as entanglement, we have been able to entangle things together before, and superposition exists. Superposition is the thing quantum computers run on. The qubits are called so because instead of just being either 1 or 0 like a classical bit, they can be in a third state, the superposition of 1 and 0.

Sorry if I come off as impolite, I'm not trying to.

This is all very interesting. Thanks so much for explaining it! Don't worry, you weren't being impolite. I just wanted to make sure you know that I'm not qualified in this field or anything.

oh thats quite alright, and it was really alright, always a pleasure talking to someone willing to listen.

If I said anything that's incorrect, let me know politely. I'm a senior in high school and have only taken classical physics. Anything I know about quantum mechanics is through my own research, which is not much at all.

well they will start to slow down in terms of the current technology. At the level of individual atom, transistors become more and more complex, as at that level quantum tunnelling can start to take place and the electrons can completely disregard the transistor. Meaning transistors can only be made so small, and our current technology gets better because we make the transistors smaller so we can fit more. So the development of the current type of computer will start to slow down as we go further. Although we still need the current technology. Quantum computers are good at solving problems regular computers can't, and the opposite is also true, regular computers can solve some problems that are difficult on quantum computers. Its a fundamental principle of computing, if a problem is difficult on one type of computer, it will be difficult on another of the same type of computer no matter how much more powerful. So in essence, we need a combination of the quantum computer and current computer.

I see what you mean and forgive me if I simply this too much or just don't understand it all. You're telling me that these computers are going to run on the basis of quantum mechanics, which is not yet proven to be true. Alright, well throw it a bone there, it can't be proven because of the definition of a theory, only disproven, but because of hundreds of years of testing, we can safely assume that it's probably true. However, you're telling me that these computers are going to run on quantum tunneling, which is not something that we can actively control in a computer. All I know about it is that it's largely based off of probability. I'm no computer engineer, but it seems almost impossible to harness that. Also, I believe I read that there's a size limit to how small we can make a transistor (this is considering future advancements).

Anyway, to reach the end goal here, a hybrid computer has to be made and that probably isn't as easy as it sounds. Also, this doesn't seem economically realistic to achieve on a consumer level. I would imagine that a transistor capable of quantum tunneling would be quite expensive.

The computers themselves don't work on quantum tunnelling, that's the thing that limits our current computers to being above a certain size, if the transistors get too small they start to experience quantum effects, and therefor let's electrons pass through using quantum tunneling, making them useless since they are just switches and a switch is useless if it lets electricity through when you don't want it to. Quantum effects can be proven, such as entanglement, we have been able to entangle things together before, and superposition exists. Superposition is the thing quantum computers run on. The qubits are called so because instead of just being either 1 or 0 like a classical bit, they can be in a third state, the superposition of 1 and 0.

Sorry if I come off as impolite, I'm not trying to.

This is all very interesting. Thanks so much for explaining it! Don't worry, you weren't being impolite. I just wanted to make sure you know that I'm not qualified in this field or anything.

oh thats quite alright, and it was really alright, always a pleasure talking to someone willing to listen.

If I said anything that's incorrect, let me know politely. I'm a senior in high school and have only taken classical physics. Anything I know about quantum mechanics is through my own research, which is not much at all.

I still have this from the first time I saw this post

You don't leave...