After decades of discussion the quark chip is now close to a reality,
says Uri Geller.
Little things count.There is nothing smaller than a quark,and it is about
to become the most powerful counting device in the universe ever. Quarks
are sub-atomic fragments, the particles which make up atoms.They obey their
own laws of physics -
quantum
laws, which are barely understood even today.
One law states that observing quarks influences their behaviour - quarks
are like nervous teenagers who know when their parents are watching.Another
law allows quarks to be in two places at the same time, and to exist
simultaneously in two conflicting states. Quarks get to have their cake and
eat it. Microchips are millions of times bigger than quarks, and they use
binary
logic to perform all their calculations. The answer to every question
is either 0 or 1. It's as if a microchip can answer Yes or No,but nothing
else.
Quarks are different - they can answer Yes and NO at the same time. If a
quark chip could be created,the whole string of calculations that binary
logic uses would be resolved instantly. It's as if time could be closed up
like a telescope,and possible futures could unfold at the same moment. Scientists
at six of the world's most advanced laboratories, including Bell and IBM
as well as MIT and Oxford, are now racing against the clock to be the first
to build a quark chip. "We will be able to pack more computational power
into a device the size of a sugar cube than is available in the world now,"
says Ralph Merkle, a research scientist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre
(PARC), in California. "I think that in the not-so-distant future, we will
have devices with the computational power of roughly a billion Pentium
computers." The theory of
quantum
computing has been discussed for decades,but quarks seemed impossibly
delicate for engineering. One stray particle of radiation,perhaps from an
exploding supernova 10,000 light years away,could completely wreck the results.
But when mathematician Peter Shor at AT&T Labs, in Florham Park, New
Jersey, demonstrated the potential
code-breaking
power of a quark chip to defence scientists in 1994, US Government
funds suddenly became available from the national war chest.America's National
Security Agency and its Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency - which
was responsible for building the internet - are both spending millions of
dollars annually on this very project.
Shor's idea involves chains of quark chips, all performing the same calculations.
If one is damaged the others will carry on, undeterred.
As more people me their PCs creatively,Uri Geller says we should he cautious
of the results.
Computer art. Two words that go together like llama and shoe.Despite the
mind-blowing software that can float a virtual Titanic on a pixelated ocean
or blow up New York with a UFO death ray, art is not a digital concept.
A computer is a tool for solving problems, which might be recreating a lost
Michelangelo in Photoshop or maximising last quarter's tax write-off. The
computer itself just sees ones and zeros - lots of them. So when a painting
program makes your family snaps look like Monet canvases, that's clever,
but it isn't art.Not even Bill Gates' multi-million dollar scheme to hang
flat screens on his walls for switching on electronic Old Masters is art
- it's a problem solving project about thin screens, reflected light and
monitor resolutions.
The art is a by-product. One exception to this rule is
art evolved from mathematics.
Fractal images, based on
endlessly looped
equations graphed in greater and greater detail were the first computer
images to change the way we looked at
the
natural world. Computer- generated images from
Mandelbrot
sets became jagged coastlines. The crucial factor there was originality
- no-one had thought of the seaside in algebraic terms before. And this wasn't
problem solving, it was innovation. For great
fractals,
visit www.fractalus.com/ifl
.
Movie graphics pioneer Char Davies has gone even deeper by creating glistening
worlds of transparent lights and reflections that can be explored with a
virtual reality headset. Her most ambitious creation, Ephemere, was exhibited
last year at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. A director of Softimage
in Montreal, she used a Silicon Graphics Onyx2 computer to create zones filled
with glowing membranes and abstract shapes.
Davies warns most virtual realities will be developed for porn and games:
"Mainstream applications seem highly reflective of our society today in terms
of the violence, aggression and speed." Catch a glimpse of her universe at
http://immersence.com. An online
gallery at
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/home.shtml
provides evidence of new art forms.
Ada's layout is a frames-based setup with a neat lava applet that scrolls
icons in the index window.Hit an icon at random and an artist's work is
presented. A really subversive exhibit is a fruit
machine that gambles on domain names.
Across the top of your screen three coloured bars appear, labelled .com .org
and .edu. Three of the web's multi-trillion pages are picked at random -
if their domains match your winning line, the jackpot is yours. It's just
a virtual jackpot, but then it's only computer art.