{"id":45667,"date":"2026-09-06T13:17:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=45667"},"modified":"2026-09-06T13:17:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:17:29","slug":"its-armageddon-isnt-it-isnt-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/09\/06\/its-armageddon-isnt-it-isnt-it\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Armageddon, Isn’t It? Isn’t It??"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For those readers responsible for Internet security at their employers, and those who use their computers to communicate securely with other sites, such as banking facilities and the like – there, that’s just about everyone – there has been, at least for the knowledgeable, the oncoming terror of Q-Day<\/strong><\/a>. This appellation is applied to the day that a quantum computer successfully breaks the encryption we use on the Internet.<\/p>\n

But how would a quantum computer accomplish this terror? First, keep in mind that I’m just an obsolete software engineer, still employed, meaning I do not work on quantum computers, and thus only know what I read, and I do not know nor study quantum mechanics. The most common approach that I’ve seen mentioned is to implement something called Shor’s algorithm<\/a>, developed by Peter Shor, that leverages the capability of qubits<\/em>, the analog to classical computers’ bits, to assume multiple values simultaneously, and execute the parallel calculations simultaneously, which makes them capable of breaking encryption.<\/p>\n

Yes, that’s very high level and rough.<\/p>\n

So. What am I talking about? Classical quantum mechanics is based on an assumption that it’s a continuous view of quantum space (Hilbert space, actually). But, and skipping over the assertions and arguments and discussion that are way beyond me, what if a better representation of quantum mechanics is one based on a discrete<\/em> view of quantum space? A quantum physicist at Oxford named Tim Palmer has proposed just such a view<\/a>, one in which irrational numbers<\/a> are excluded. He calls it rational quantum mechanics<\/a>, or RaQM<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And what does it mean for Q-Day? The above link, which is to a paywalled NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> article, suggests that Q-Day may never come. Using the theory, a different constraint on the number of possible values a qubit may simultaneously assume, a constraint much lower<\/em> than Shor’s algorithm requires.<\/p>\n

So if disaster seemed imminent to you, or you hadn’t heard of Q-Day, be aware that it may never occur. Not to say some clever cookie will never come up with some other method for cracking encryption, but using quantum mechanics may never work.<\/p>\n

More importantly, this may generate the observation that cracks classical quantum mechanics theory. Most theories are used and accepted until some observation of a phenomena occurs that the theory cannot explain. While We can’t seem to get there!<\/em> is not as positive as, say, observing what we now call plate tectonics and realizing theories assuming the Earth is a static ball of water and continents, it would be a significant observation, and would force a rethinking of quantum mechanics theory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those readers responsible for Internet security at their employers, and those who use their computers to communicate securely with other sites, such as banking facilities and the like – there, that’s just about everyone – there has been, at least for the knowledgeable, the oncoming terror of Q-Day. This \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45667"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45672,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45667\/revisions\/45672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}