As part of their public debates on physics in the 1920s Einstein and Bohrs did thought experiments. Thre was not the apparatus to separate, observe and manipulate atomic and sub atomic particles, so they used their minds. Bohrs won the debate. But Einstein got his licks in. The underlying bits of the world are both particles and waves, and that has important ramifications.
About 100 years later lab researchers can do what Bohrs and Einstein
thought of. They are able to manipulate photons, atoms and ions. Some of this
work has become part of technologies commonly available. The manipulation of atoms
and electrons in electronic engineering and photonics systems are most
prominent. These techs moved ahead with meagre understanding of the implicit physics,
which didn’t matter as a new world was dramatically forged. Tunable lasers and
superconducting circuits are among the important sub-technologies that have made
continual, if subtle, progress in recent years.
Even today, moving these cosmic iota as around, as
envisioned by the likes of Bohr and Einstein, is not easy. Today’s quantum computing researcher will, when
pressed, admit as much. They move around qubits (not the Pharoh’s kind)
gingerly about. The possibility to harness these lab efforts in the form of
commercial computers seems near. “How near is it?” is one of the big questions
of computer design at the moment.
It was 2012 when the Nobel committee rewarded the efforts of
experimental physicists Serge Haroche and Daid Wineline (check spelling) to
control particles. Their worked spanned back at lest to the 1990s - 1970s by some measure. Haroche has
Related
Nobel Laureate in physics Serge Haroche – Nobel Lectures in Uppsala 2012 - YouTube
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