#25 - Quantum Error Correction: why we need it and a novel theory for quantum consciousness

In episode 25 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses quantum error correction, a protocol by which noise from the environment is actively counteracted in order to create quantum computations that are robust against the destructive chaos of the environment. Quantum computers are on the near horizon with companies like Google and IBM actively working to improve the technology. These computers will revolutionize information technology by providing a speed-up to the run time of algorithms at a scale that our minds struggle to comprehend. The enormity of an exponentially increasing space truly boggles the mind. For example, two shuffled decks of cards have a 1 in 10^67th chance of ending up in the same configuration. This is vastly greater than the number of grains of sand on the beach and atoms on and within the planet. While quantum computers promise to search these massive spaces in feasible time frames, any perturbation from the environment renders these computations unusable. Quantum error correction is required to salvage the utility of quantum computers. In digital error correction, we can provide redundant information about a bit of information such that chaotic forces can be reversed if that bit flips from a zero to a one or vice versa. Quantum error correction is similar but with the addition of a phase flip and bit+phase flip. Quantum error correction is currently being developed and quantum computers will become practical and fault tolerant in the near future, we just need to divide the advertised qubits in modern computers by 5 or 9. Finally, could biology being using a form of quantum error correction to make quantum computation in the brain more feasible? Looking at the Penrose-Hameroff microtubule model as an example, microtubules could each be encoding a single register of one fault tolerant qubit in their multiple topologies, or the topological arrangement of tubulin could serve as a fault tolerant qubit in itself. Furthermore, there may be protein systems designed to interface with microtubules that apply corrective quantum gates to the system in order to actively counteract destructive environmental forces. While speculative at this point, quantum error correction in biology could be the defining feature for how usable quantum computations are sustained for extended time frames giving rise to consciousness itself.