A photon can be considered as a particle or a wave, or both at the same time, or neither (like liquids have properties of solids, gases, both and neither all at once). The particle bit can be considered to be in one state, or position, and the wave bit in another state or position while the photon is in both but yet neither states... with me so far?
There are lots of routes the photon could take through the algorith to reach an answer (like there are lots of routes through a building to get to a certain room), but they need only detect it in one position of one state to know where it it heading. So by superpositioning a photon is states of 1 and 0 (ie "run program" and "don't run program",) physicists are a very clever lot who can take a small amount of information (the position and state of a certain photon at a certain time) and extrapolate to find the large answer.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2006-Feb-24, Friday 06:59 (UTC)A photon can be considered as a particle or a wave, or both at the same time, or neither (like liquids have properties of solids, gases, both and neither all at once). The particle bit can be considered to be in one state, or position, and the wave bit in another state or position while the photon is in both but yet neither states... with me so far?
There are lots of routes the photon could take through the algorith to reach an answer (like there are lots of routes through a building to get to a certain room), but they need only detect it in one position of one state to know where it it heading. So by superpositioning a photon is states of 1 and 0 (ie "run program" and "don't run program",) physicists are a very clever lot who can take a small amount of information (the position and state of a certain photon at a certain time) and extrapolate to find the large answer.
Does that help?