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Can physics be simulated by a universal computer? ... the physical world is quantum mechanical, and therefore the proper problem is the simulation of quantum physics ... the full description of quantum mechanics for a large system R particles ... has too many variables, it cannot be simulated with a normal computer with a number of elements proportional to R ... but it can be simulated with quantum computer elements. ... Can a quantum system be probabilistically simulated by a classical (probabilistic, I'd assume) universal computer? ... If you take the computer to be the classical kind I've described so far ... the answer is certainly, No!- Richard P. Feynman
The theory of computation has traditionally been studied almost entirely in the abstract, as a topic in pure mathematics. This is to miss the point of it. Computers are physical objects, and computations are physical processes. What computers can or cannot compute is determined by the laws of physics alone, and not by pure mathematics.- David Deutsch
If computers that you build are quantum,
Then spies everywhere will all want 'em.
Our codes will all fall,
And they'll read our email,
Till we get crypto that's quantum, and daunt 'em.
- Jennifer and Peter Shor
To read our E-mail, how mean
of the spies and their quantum machine;
be comforted though,
they do not ye know
how to factorize twelve or fifteen.
- Volker Strassen
Anybody who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.- Niels Bohr
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