Lars Becker-Larsen

Taming the Quantum World

A group of European physicists are working on new generation of computers. These will completely revolutionize the global information technology by exploiting the most peculiar phenomena of quantum mechanics - Superposition and Entanglement. These paradoxical phenomena are today being exploited in order to create the global quantum information technology of the future. Quantum computers will literally possess completely revolutionary capacity and be able to process information quantities, which all of the world's existing computers would never be able to accomplish. It will be possible to crack any known security system in seconds as an experiment from Innsbruck shows. In Munich scientists are trying to generate an enormous virtual reality on a quantum computer that may prove to be the tool to solve problems from global warming to the final fate of the universe.

The Moving Earth

In 1543 the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the prevailing view of the world: he claimed that the Earth was not the immovable centre of the world but a planet in orbit around the sun. To the Christian church this was a heresy that contradicted the Bible. For centuries to come great scientists like Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton wrestled with the question of a moving earth in the face of opposition from the church, which sentenced Galileo to house arrest and burned the philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. Their struggle led not only to a new view of the world, but also to the modern natural sciences and thereby the way we view the world today.

The Moving Earth

In 1543 the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the prevailing view of the world: he claimed that the Earth was not the immovable centre of the world but a planet in orbit around the sun. To the Christian church this was a heresy that contradicted the Bible. For centuries to come great scientists like Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton wrestled with the question of a moving earth in the face of opposition from the church, which sentenced Galileo to house arrest and burned the philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. Their struggle led not only to a new view of the world, but also to the modern natural sciences and thereby the way we view the world today.