In the last few episodes we explored the basics of quantum mechanics (check here), now let us switch gears and explore some interesting applications of quantum technologies!
If I ask you whether simulating something is easier than actually doing it, you might say: “Of course simulating is easier!” And nowadays, you’d be right—at least most of the time.
But if you had asked the same question back in the 80s or 90s, many engineers would have confidently told you that crashing two real cars for a movie scene was cheaper and simpler than simulating a crash on a computer. Today it’s the other way around: we simulate everything—buildings, fluid flow, pilot trainings, movies, video games, you name it.
In science and engineering, simulation is usually faster, safer, cheaper, and often more reliable than running the real experiment. But here’s the twist of today’s story:
There are experiments that are much easier to build in real life than to simulate—even on the world’s fastest supercomputers.
And to understand why, we’re going to start with something unexpectedly delightful:
pinball.
