Revisiting Our Quantum World

Of course, now we know that quantum mechanics has been a fundamental structure of our world since our universe came into being. However, it has been only a century since the experimental and theoretical discovery of quantum mechanics and its extensions into many implications and applications. In particular, there are implications across many disciplines that most likely will affect education, health, security, etc. Examples are given of the need for starting education as early as possible in schools, the use of nano-robots to deliver drugs targeted to specific molecular sites, to developing new cryptographic systems to safeguard our privacy. Ke ywords: Ke ywords: education, neuroscience, nano-robots, financial markets, financial options, security, computation, optimization


Introduction
The history of computers is relatively new, less than 90 years old, within the lifetime of some readers of this book! Clearly,h umans have been quite busy during this time, developing powerful computers to replace pen/pencil and paper. An outline of the short (in time only) history of computers includes: The foundations of the mathematical foundation of computing is generally attributed to Turing in 1936(Turing, 1937.
The first computer is generally considered to be the ENIAC, completed in 1946.
The first quantum algorithm that has had far-reaching implications is generally attributed to Shor in 1994(Shor,1994.
The physical-mathematical foundations of quantum computing is generally attributed to Benioffin1980 (Benioff, 1980.
The initial history of quantum computers per se usually is generally attributed to Feynman in 1982(R. Feynman, 1982.
The first commercially available quantum computer is generally considered to be built by D-WAVE in 2017, building on a small 2-qubit quantum computer built circa 1997-1998.
The basic unit of a quantum computer is a a qubit (quantum bit), the quantum analog of a classicalcomputer bit. Aclassical bit can be a state 0 or 1, whereas a qubit can be in a linear combination, called a superposition, of 0 and 1. Forac lassical computer with 2 bits, there are 4 possible states, but only one state can be realized at anygiv entime. For a quantum computer with 2 qubits, there are 4 possible states, all of which can be realized simultaneously and "superposition" of all linear combinations are possible. There are multiple theories vying for testing, in some cases offering radically different interpretations of reality based on quantum mechanics, e.g., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-twist-onschroedingers-cat-paradox-has-major-implications-for-quantum-theory/ . When such a quantum state is subject to decoherence, e.g., by a classical measurement process, it becomes a classical state, wherein it becomes just one classical state. This decoherence is at the heart of whyi ti ss od ifficult to build a quantum computer,a sa ny classical perturbation causes quantum states to collapse into classical states. Decoherence still is referred to by manyp eople as the "collapse" of the wave-function; however, evensome of the issues reported here are not quite well explained using the term

Many quantum computers
There are manyquantum computers nowavailable from manycompanies/institutions. As of about a year ago, the author cited 17 (Ingber,2018b power; see https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/quantum-computers-next-frontier-classical-google-ibm-nasa-supremacy. I nA ugust 2020 Quantum Base announced business plans to build a computer with 1000 trillion qubits; see https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2020/08/18/goodbye-passwords-hellounbreakable-quantum-ids-containing-1000-trillion-atoms-quantum-base-qid-lancaster-university . Also in August 2020 IBM announced its major breakthrough in https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-hits-newquantum-computing-milestone/ . Although companies are exploring different machines, it is clear that the scales of thought of quantum computation are expanding rapidly.Q uantum computing is being taken quite seriously evena si t struggles to compete with classical computing on large scales.

Quantum mechanics is still a mystery
It must be appreciated that quantum mechanics (QM) is still a mystery to us all. There are unresolved issues about the basic assumptions, called axioms, on which QM rests. There is a steady stream of research examining these issues. Fore xample, https://phys.org/news/2020-08-quantum-paradox-revealscontradiction-widely.html reports on such aspects published as this chapter is being written (Bong et al, 2020). The issue arises when considering Wigner'so bserver observing the observer of a quantum experiment, a point raised by Wigner in 1961 (Wigner,1 961). It is well established that when a macroscopic body,l ikeal arge machine or a person, interacts with a quantum event, the wav e-function describing that event suffers decoherence, and the event is pinned into a probabilistic event which is what is typically measured. That is, the measurement just measures one of the possible manifestations of the wave-function, not the wav e-function itself. When consideration is made for an observer observing a sensitive quantum system making a quantum measurement on a different quantum system, this is where the analysis can fork into different possibilities as yet not well understood.

What'satstake?
Whyi st his newq uantum technology important, and howc an it affect our lives? Some rationale will be giveni nt his chapter.K eep in mind that just about all of this is still reasonably considered as being speculative,i nt erms of what newq uantum technologies can actually delivero nl arge social scales. However, interms of a financial options calculation, where the expected gain/loss overthe duration of the option is a sum of products of expected payoffs/losses times probabilities of becoming mature technology, Ibelieve that all readers will see that the the expected gain is quite large for humanity. It may "hurt" to try to understand some quantum technologies -in the sense of getting emotionally disturbed by being presented with a lot of newi nformation. Tom aket his transition a bit easier,i tw ill help to look at twoe xample systems, one that has been with in the womb -our brain, and the other a vital part of our social interactions -money. Then, we also may get some understanding of another system, with the key word "blockchain" that manyr eaders may have seen in the press, and how developments in the quantum world may deeply affect us in the near future. The following sections will describe quantum influences in several disciplines. Becoming familiar with the quantum world requires education, which is important to acquire as early as possible in single-digits of age, to develop intuitions that will help us to learn more if we wish, and at least prepare us to make informed decisions affecting all our lives. Neuroscience will lead to newdrugs. Quantum cryptology will lead to news ecure methods of transactions, including money. Quantum blockchains will lead to new secure ledgers of information that affect bank transactions, government databases, and storing and retrieving your personal information. This all is much too important to leave inthe hands of a fewpeople, ev enifyou feel you could trust them. Instead, we all must become vital participants in our futures.

Education
The quantum world is not "intuitive." Ast estified by thousands of years before 1900 or so, no one truly imagined the nature of the quantum world. Even Democritus or Leucippus, his mentor,b oth circa 400-500 B.C., who are credited with postulating "atomism", had no clue as the nature of the atomic world as we knowitnow,and we are still learning more about this world that of course has always been with us. Indeed, it took experiments only possible in the 1900'st ou nderstand the nature of quantum mechanics. Fore xample, the famous double-slit experiment, sometimes reputed to be modeled on a similar experiment that may have been performed by Young in 1801, by Davisson andGermer in 1927 (Davisson &Germer,1927) showed that truly atomic particles possess a wav e-particle duality. Quantum entities (likeanelectron) sometimes, e.g., in collisions behave asparticles, and sometimes, e.g., in defraction likeinthe double-slit experiments theybehave asw av es. When theybehave asw av es, they can demonstrate interference patterns, which we nowattribute to the wav e-function describing their paths in space-time. When theyb ehave asp articles, it is the the absolute square of this wav e-function that describes the probability of their space-time location. Quantum particles also exhibit the "uncertainty principle", wherein variables that are mathematically "conjugate" within the experimentally verified Planck constant h =1 .0545718 X 10-34 meters-squared kilogram/sec. For example, momentum and positions are conjugate variables, as are energy and time.
There are limits to the precision/resolution that can be obtained by both members of conjugate variables, the product being limited to h.T his means that the resolution of momentum multiplied by the resolution of position (in the same system) can only be measured to within h;attheir minimum levels of resolution, an increase of resolution of one of them incurs a corresponding loss of resolution in the other. The primary take-home lesson is that all this is not intuitive.W eo nly knowa ll this because of verified experiments and verified theories since circa 1900. So, howc an we expect children to enter the neww orld of quantum technologies that are rapidly being created, based solely on their interactions with the world devoid of knowledge of these quantum experiments and theories? The clear answer is that theycan not and theywill not learn anyofthis unless theya re exposed to these experiments and theories. While the mathematics and physics theory may require some years of education to understand quantum mechanics, basic intuitions of this world can easily be imparted by exposing children to manye xperiments as early as (pre-)kindergarten, evenb efore their formal education begins! For manyp eople, without this early exposure to the quantum world, they will be clueless and helpless to makei nformed decisions, e.g., likev oting on funding newt echnologies, selecting drugs based on these technologies, etc. Therefore, we must start as early as possible, educating students and citizens about the quantum world in which theyliv e. There are several online sites that offer courses in quantum computing, e.g., https://www.edx.org/learn/quantum-computing https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=quantum%20computing and in quantum mechanics, e.g., https://www.edx.org/learn/quantum-physics-mechanics https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=quantum%20physics Most courses can be taken at no charge.

Neuroscience
It is likely possible to control brain function by targetting specific mechanisms at molecular levels, instead of using drugs that are widely systemic and have multiple contraindications. As an example discussed in a recent paper (Ingber,2018a), large-scale neuronal firings can be influences by regenerative molecular Ca 2+ generated at tripartite neuron-astrocyte quantum-scale sites. This suggests a mechanism by which nano-robots may control background synaptic activity that in turn control attention and memory,b yd elivering pharmaceutical agents. This interaction, if indeed found to be present in neocortex, would represent interactions overh uge ranges, interactions between quantum molecular scales and highly synchronous neural firings among millions of neurons. Of the 10 11 cells in the human brain, about half are neurons, and the other half are glial cells. Astrocytes likely comprise the majority of glial cells. There are manyp apers which examine the roles of astrocytes on synaptic processes (Bellinger,2 005;Innocenti et al,2 000;Scemes & Giaume, 2006;Agulhon et al, 2008;Pereira & Furlan, 2009;Reyes & Parpura, 2009;Araque & Navarrete, 2010;Banaclocha et al, 2010;Volterra et al,2014).
Regenerative intercellular calcium wav es( ICWs) can travelo ver1 00s of astrocytes, encompassing many neuronal synapses. These ICWs are documented in the control of synaptic activity (Ross, 2012).
[Ca 2+ ]( concentration of Ca 2+ )a ffect increased release probabilities at synaptic sites, likely due to triggering release of gliotransmitters. (Free Ca 2+ wavesa re considered here, not intracellular astrocyte calcium wav esinsitu which also increase neuronal firings.) During selective attention tasks, partially confirmed by fitting scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, free regenerative Ca 2+ waves, arising from tripartite interactions, couple to the magnetic vector potential A produced by highly synchronous collective firings. A is derivedf rom the neocortical dipole moment Q,a veraged overm anyn eurons, in turn proportional to the current I which develops the electric potential on the scalp measured as EEG.

Reasonable Estimates
Estimates used for Q come from experimental data. When coherent activity among manymacrocolumns associated with short-term memory (STM) is considered, |A|may be orders of magnitude larger.T here is direct coherence between Ca 2+ wavesa nd the activity of A.Asimple classical calculation shows qA, where q is the charge of a Ca 2+ ion, from macroscopic EEG to be on the order of 10 −28 kg-m/s, while the momentum p of a Ca 2+ ion is on the order of 10 −30 kg-m/s. The recent XSEDE.orgproject developed by the author (Ingber,2011;Ingber,2012b;Ingber,Pappalepore &Stesiak, 2014;Ingber,2015;Ingber,2016b), investigates Top-Down influences of macroscopic patterns of neuronal firings, measured by scalp EEG during attentional memory tasks, on Bottom-Up free microscopic Ca 2+ ions created tripartite interactions, which interact with background synaptic activity that in turn influence large synchronous firings of neurons. During the development of this project, it was recognized that the proposed mechanism for this Top-Down Bottom-Up synergy could be influenced by nano-robots, to deliverp harmaceutical agents under conscious control of a person (Ingber,2015).

Neurology Considered
Astrocytes influence glutamate, the main excitatory excitatory neurotransmitter in neocortex, by taking in some glutamate released by presynaptic neurons and converting it into glutamine which can enter presynaptic neurons where it can be re-converted into glutamate. GABAi st he main inhibitory neurotransmitter in neocortex, produced by inhibitory neurons by also utilizing glutamic acid (which when stripped of a hydrogen atom is glutamate) from astrocytes (Patel et al,2 001;Walls et al,2 015). Ca 2+ wavesarise from nonlinear cooperative regenerative processes from internal stores, involving several biochemical steps (Ross, 2012;Pitta et al,2012;Goldberg et al,2010).

Classical/Quantum Ve ctor Potential influence on Ca 2+ Momenta
Columnar firings develop electromagnetic fields described by a magnetic vector potential, referred to as the SMNI vector potential (SMNI-VP). Early included the "Smoking Gun" that implicates top-down interactions at molecular scales (Ingber,2011;Ingber,2012b). Some papers calculated the approach in a classical physics context (Ingber,2 012c). After these papers, detailed interactions were described of SMNI-VP firing states with Ca 2+ waves, in both classical and quantum mechanics (Ingber,2 011;Ingber, 2012b), and quantum contexts (Ingber,P appalepore & Stesiak, 2014;Ingber,2015), using the "canonical momentum" p + qA.T he theoretical construct of the canonical momentum Π=p + qA is firmly entrenched in classical and quantum mechanics (R. P.F eynman, 1949;Schulman, 1981). See https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_15.html for a nice introduction. Columnar firing states are reasonably modeled as a wire/neuron with current I along a length z observed from a perpendicular distance r from a line of thickness r 0 .T he integral (sum of contributions) of I over r givest he magnetic vector potential A (Jackson, 1962). This givesa ni nsensitive log dependence on distance. The contribution to A includes manym inicolumnar lines of current from 100'st o1 000'so f macrocolumns, contributing to large synchronous bursts of EEG (Srinivasan et al,2 007). E and B,a re derivativeso f A with respect to r,g iving inverse-polynomial sensitivities. Theyd on ot possess this logarithmic insensitivity and do not linearly accumulate strength across macrocolumns. This study is robust against much theoretical modeling as experimental data is used whereverpossible. The author used path-integrals to derive a closed-form solution of the propagation of the Ca 2+ wavepacket composed of manyC a 2+ ions (Ingber,2 018a). This wave function was used to calculate the probability distribution of this wav e-packet, which was used to modify synaptic interactions in the SMNI model, tested by fitting this to EEG data. The calculation is quite sensitive to h which is a test of the sensitivity to quantum interactions at the large scale of columnar firings of neurons.

Fitting SMNI Model Including EICW to EEG Data
The influence of A on the background-noise of synaptic parameters SMNI used ASA to fit 28 parameters across a circuitry underlying 6 electrode sites using NIAAA data (Ingber,P appalepore & Stesiak, 2014;Ingber,2015). The momenta of Ca 2+ ions are influenced during EEG events likeN 100 and P300 potentials common in selective attention tasks (Srinivasan et al,2007). Codes for SMNI fits to EEG data (Ingber,1997;Ingber, 1998) were used as templates. The influence of Ca 2+ wavesi st ested by parameterizing synaptic parameters to be dependent on Ca 2+ wave activity. To date, results of fits to EEG data only demonstrate that fits to an A model are reasonably better than fits to the no-A model.

Conscious Control of Nano-Robots Influencing Attention and Memory
Demonstration that nano-robots may be used in this context were calculated (Ingber,2 015), assuming Ca 2+ -wav e momentum-sensors acting as a piezoelectric devices (Alivisatos et al,2013;Wang, 2012). At the beginning of a Ca 2+ wave (100'so fm s), a change of momentum is on the order of 10 −30 kg-m/s. A Ca 2+ wave packet of 1000 ions with onset time of 1 ms produces a force on the order 10 −24 N( 1N ≡ 1Newton = 1 kg-m/s 2 ). Nano-robots drawn to this site could deposit chemicals/drugs that interact with the Ca 2+ -wav e process. If the receptor area of the nanosystem were 1 nm 2 (resolution of scanning confocal electron microscopy( SCEM)), this would require a pressure sensitivity of 10 −6 Pa (1Pa= 1pascal = 1 N/m 2 ). The nanosystem could be switched on/offa tar egional/columnar levelb ys ensitivity to local electric/magnetic fields.

Free Will
In addition to researching STM and multiple scales of neocortical interactions, there is interest in possible quantum influences on highly synchronous neuronal firings to understand possible connections to consciousness and "Free Will" (FW) (Ingber,2016a;Ingber,2016b). If neuroscience everestablishes experimental evidence from quantum-levelprocesses of tripartite synaptic interactions with large-scale synchronous neuronal firings, then FW may be established using the Conway-Kochen quantum no-clone "Free Will Theorem" (FWT) (Conway & Kochen, 2006;Conway & Kochen, 2009). Thus, a Ca 2+ quantum wav e-packet can generate a state provent oh av e not previously existed, since quantum states cannot be cloned.

Quantum Zeno Effects
The wav e function of the Ca 2+ wave packet was calculated by the author,a nd it was demonstrated that despite multiple collisions during their regenerative processes overl ong durations of hundreds of ms, typical Ca 2+ wavess upport a Zeno or "bang-bang" effect which may promote long coherence times (Facchi, Lidar & Pascazio, 2004;Facchi & Pascazio, 2008;Wu et al,2012;Giacosa & Pagliara, 2014;P. Zhang et al,2014;Kozlowski et al,2015;Patil et al,2015;Muller et al,2016). Of course, the Zeno/"bang-bang" effect may exist only in special contexts, since decoherence among particles is known to be very fast, one of the fasted processes known (Preskill, 2015). However, the constant collisions of Ca 2+ ions, causing some ions to enter or leave the wav e packet, may perpetuate at least part of the wav e,permitting the Zeno/"bang-bang" effect. qPAT HINT provides an opportunity to explore the coherence stability of the wav e due to serial shocks of this process. qPAT HINT was developed by the author and hs been used to calculate the evolution of the quantum path-integral, an algorithm developed By Feynman in 1948Feynman in (R.P.F eynman, 1948  The path-integral presents a mathematically equivalent representation of both multivariate stochastic differential equations with multiplicative noise (nonlinear coefficients of Gaussian noise) and of multivariate partial differential equations, but also offering numerical and intuitive advantages like derivations of common concepts likeforce, momentum, etc (Langouche et al,1979).

Quantum Money
Manyc ountries are exploring "digital currencies". E.g., see https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20200813a.htm . These include the use of blockchains for security,b ut controlled by central governments. This can be viewed as just the first step to considering newc urrencies, which of course will compete, if not dominate, with distributed blockchains likeBitcoin. In the near future quantum computing will continue to be investigated for applications to financial products. Tooffer hedging as well as speculation, financial derivativeswill developed on these products. Then, qPAT HTREE and qPAT HINT are poised to calculate financial derivativesi nt hese quantum complexs paces. This presents contexts beyond using quantum computers to calculate financial derivatives, since the space of the dependent variables themselves may live inquantum worlds (Baaquie et al,2 002;Piotrowski et al,2 005;Accardi & Boukas, 2007;Meyer,2 009;Aaronson & Christiano, 2012;Jogenfors, 2016).

Financial Options On Quantum Money
To numerically calculate the path integral, especially for serial changes in time in the presence of random shocks -not approachable with standard Monte Carlo techniques -PAT HINT and the quantum version qPAT HINT were developed. The codes are written for arbitrary N dimensions, and have been used for several papers in both classical and quantum systems (Ingber,2 000;Ingber & Wilson, 2000;Ingber, 2016a;Ingber,2017a;Ingber,2017b). Manysystems propagate in the presence of continual "shocks" which include: future dividends changes in interest rates changes in asset distributions used in American options algorithms which are included in these calculations.

Blockchains
The design of the "Blockchain" is generally attributed to Nakamoto in 2008, e.g., according to Wikipedia in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto . Acopyofhis 2008 white paper can be downloaded from https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf . The blockchain is a ledger that is validated, entry by entry,e.g., for anyitem, contract, or whatever. Still today,this validation via encryption pretty much hiding identities of people utilizing them is at the core of much strain in cryto-products likec rypto-currency( such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, etc.). Proof of Work was the original design and still has the largest scale via Bitcoin, but this requires lots of energy and time for the constant verification process; the potential drain on energy is evenconsidered to be a threat to climate change! While theoretically,a nyone can participate in the validation process, in practice only a handful of large data banks, consuming towns and cities, effectively do most of the validation. This has givenrise to some products likeRipple that do awaywith the democracyofv alidation by validators, and these are endorsed by manyl arge institutions, e.g., manyb anks, who prefer this more efficient control overr esources, dismaying manyardent supporters of blockchains. As in SMNI, the core of the quantum no-clone "Free Will Theorem" (FWT) theorem can have important applications in this domain. Fore xample, quantum currencyc annot be cloned. Such currencies are exceptional candidates for very efficient blockchains, e.g., since each "coin" has a unique identity (Meyer, 2009;Aaronson & Christiano, 2012;Bartkiewicz et al,2016;Jogenfors, 2016). As in SMNI, there are issues about the decoherence time of such "coins".