Looking back at the history of mankind
Which science and technology breakthroughs will make human civilization advance by leaps and bounds?
Looking back at the history of mankind, we can see that if there is a breakthrough in a particularly useful science and technology, human civilization will develop by leaps and bounds as a result. This was the case in the past, and the future should be the same, so the question arises, for modern mankind, which science and technology once a breakthrough, human civilization will be a quantum leap forward?
See this question, I believe the first answer many people think of is controlled nuclear fusion, the actual situation is indeed the same, about this technology I believe we are already familiar with, simply put, controlled nuclear fusion can provide modern humans with a large amount of clean and cheap high-quality energy, thus paving the way for the sustainable development of human civilization.
It is worth noting that there is a common argument that once humans master controlled fusion they can have almost unlimited energy, which is rather one-sided because what humans are currently trying to break through is the nuclear fusion of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen that are not as abundant in the universe as they are thought to be.
Hydrogen has three isotopes, namely protium, deuterium, and tritium, and although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the known universe, they are protium, whose relative abundance is about 99.9844%, compared to deuterium, which is only about 0.0156%, and because tritium is radioactive and has a half-life of about 12.46 years, the naturally occurring tritium is almost negligible, so much so that The tritium needed by humans can only be prepared using other elements (such as lithium and beryllium).
Therefore, it can be said that only when mankind has mastered controlled fusion based on protium can we be said to have "almost unlimited energy", but then again, controlled fusion is indeed too fragrant, so even if we only break through controlled fusion based on deuterium and tritium, human civilization can still advance by leaps and bounds, and only in the further development of Only in the process of further development may there be a shortage of "nuclear fuel".
In fact, in addition to controlled fusion, we have another technological breakthrough to look forward to - quantum computers.
In the history of human civilization, the emergence of computers is undoubtedly a milestone, with the help of computers, human data processing capabilities have been greatly improved, which in turn has led to a variety of human science and technology have been greatly developed.
Computers use a binary data model, the basic unit is called "bits", each bit can be "0" or "1", and the more bits, the more complex information it can carry. The more bits there are, the more complex the information it can carry. We can simply understand that the computer processing of data is a large number of "0" and "1" to process.
Traditional computers mainly use the difference of current or voltage to represent "0" and "1", for example, no current means "0", and current means "1". In addition, there are other ways to represent "0" and "1", for example, mechanical hard disks are represented by the difference in the direction of the magnetic needle, these ways have a common feature, that is, they represent each These methods all have one feature in common, and that is that they represent each bit as a definite "0" or "1", which is also known as the "classical bit".
Now suppose we have two bits, then we can use them to represent four combinations of "0" and "1", i.e. "0, 0", "0, 1", "1, 0", and "1, 1", each of which can be represented only one at a time for the "classical bits", while trying to To represent all 4 combinations, it would take 4 times.
Is there any way to represent all 4 combinations at once using two bits? The answer is yes, and that is "quantum bits".
I believe we all have some knowledge of "Schrödinger's cat" and are impressed by the "dead and alive" cat, although it is just a thought experiment, the "quantum superposition state" described is real. Although this is only a thought experiment, the "quantum superposition state" described is real, which means that quanta in the microscopic world can be in a superposition of different quantum states.
The "quantum bit" is based on this principle, so the "quantum bit" in the "quantum superposition state" can represent both "0 "This means that only two "quantum bits" are needed to represent all four combinations at once.
Quantum computers use "quantum bits", so they can process multiple pieces of information in parallel, and this is the power of quantum computers.
As the number of "quantum bits" increases, the computing power of quantum computers increases exponentially, for example, two "quantum bits" can process four pieces of information at the same time, and three "quantum bits, For example, two "quantum bits" can process 4 pieces of information, 3 "quantum bits" can process 8 pieces of information, and 4 "quantum bits" can process 16 pieces of information at the same time ......
Theoretically, a quantum computer with 100 "quantum bits" could reach about 1 million times the combined arithmetic power of all conventional computers in the world.
It can be seen that if this science and technology has made a substantial breakthrough, then the human's ability to process data will be unprecedentedly improved, with the powerful arithmetic power of quantum computers, human beings can completely solve those scientific research in a short period requires a huge amount of calculation of complex problems, human civilization will also be a sudden leap forward.
It is worth mentioning that quantum computers may even help human beings solve an ultimate mystery: what is human consciousness in the end?
We know that the brain is the material basis of human consciousness, so a reasonable assumption is that we only need to thoroughly understand the operation mechanism of the human brain to know what human consciousness is, and we are slow to crack this puzzle, the fundamental reason is that the human brain is too complex.
In essence, a human brain is a physical object, and its complexity is ultimately limited, so as long as humans have a quantum computer with enough computing power, they will have the ability to analyze the human brain comprehensively and meticulously, and at that time, it will not be difficult to "completely understand the operation mechanism of the brain".
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Robert Jack
One of the secrets of emotional stability for adults is to keep the expectations of others to a minimum.
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