Quantum of some solace

NAME A MEMORY ON BOARD A YACHT THAT IS GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SMILE? I was on my way to Monaco and was supposed to be staying in a room that a friend had offered to me, but when my plane landed, the owner of a 284-foot yacht called me and insisted I stay with him on his yacht. We were all mutual friends, so I said okay, let’s do it. Arriving on that yacht was pretty epic. The crew were super kind, I sat on the top deck at 2am sipping Champagne looking out over the Monaco night lights. It was surreal, and my first time as a guest on board a yacht.

DO YOU MAINLY OPERATE ON INSTAGRAM, OR DO YOU USE OTHER PLATFORMS FOR ENGAGEMENT? Instagram is the main platform, but I use Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

IF YOU OWNED A YACHT, WHAT WOULD YOU CALL IT, AND WHY? Owning a yacht has always been the goal. In the beginning, it was a small one, then I started dreaming bigger and wanted an ECLIPSE of my own and all the luxury that came with it. But I’ve met so many people on smaller 80 footers or less, cruising with family and enjoying life without all the fuss that comes with a big yacht, and I’ve really fallen for that style of yachting. Low key, close family and friends to run the boat and good memories. I always said I’d name it after my daughter, M/Y POEME. QUICKFIRE ROUND

Favorite yacht? ECLIPSE Favorite destination? Caribbean Sun or snow? Sun Chopper or submarine? Chopper Below Deck – hot or rot? ROT! Best ever yacht party? Onboard SERENITY with SSH Maritime for amfAR Cryptocurrency or dollars? CRYPTO! Favorite yacht pic? Too many to pick just one Giant boat or pocket-sized tender? Pocket explorer

For many of us, the 1990’s American science-fiction series Quantum Leap - in which scientist Sam Beckett found himself trapped in time due to an experiment gone awry - is the closest we’ll get to understanding quantum physics. But with the latest developments in the seismic world of quantum computing, that may be about to change.

Words Josh Sims Illustration Distinct Mind “When I was a kid I always wanted to be the science officer on the USS Enterprise [of Star Trek fame],” laughs Winfried Hensinger. “And there is something science fiction-like about the idea of quantum computing, even though quantum physics are really reality whereas the classical physics we all know are more like an approximation. It’s just hard to grasp the counter-intuitive idea that things normal in the quantum world are totally impossible in the ‘normal’ physical world.” Hensinger, professor of quantum technologies at the University of Sussex, UK, isn’t kidding when he says this. To give a taste, in the quantum world there’s what’s called superposition – the ability to be in multiple states at the same time. And, weirder still, there’s entanglement, or what Einstein – who was never completely convinced by quantum mechanics – referred to as “spooky action at a distance”: when a change in the state of one quantum particle changes that of another, even when they’re a long way apart.

So far, so brain melting. As the renowned physicist Richard Feynman quipped, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics…you don’t”. And yet these ideas – widely accepted as theory in the science academy for a century, and perhaps better understood than relativity – are in more recent years finding practical application in the development of the first quantum computers. Indeed, small-scale, experimental, if still impressive, quantum computers, developed by the likes of IBM, are already in operation, tapped into occasionally by the likes of CERN, ExxonMobil and Amazon.

Very broadly, if conventional computers use units (streams of electrical or optical pulses representing ones and zeros), quantum computers use qubits, usually sub-atomic particles like electrons or photons. It’s their special properties – the likes of superposition and entanglement – that give a connected group of them hugely more processing power than the usual binary bits. And by hugely, that means that a quantum computer (think of this as a very large, specialist tool rather than something that will sit on your desktop any time soon) can solve problems that would take even the most advanced conventional computers billions of years to crack.

The classic example is the traveling salesman problem: what’s the most efficient route for him to travel between 300 cities? Remarkably, assessing the countless millions of possible routes is not something a conventional computer can do, but a quantum machine could. And a business, such as FedEx, would love to know the answer. A quantum computer can be used to address whole classes of similarly particular problems that are inaccessible to the computers we know. And do it cheaper, too.

“You could extend Moore’s Law [the idea that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit, and hence conventional computing power, doubles every two years] for another