[Ciaphas Cain]

I’ll never understand how lab equipment can monitor something as small as an individual atom. Especially taking Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle into account (changing it by observing it).

[Right_Wing_Madman]

I’ll never understand how lab equipment can monitor something as small as an individual atom. Especially taking Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle into account (changing it by observing it).

Theoretically, quantum computing works because of the uncertainty principle, not in spite of it. The qubit, which is usually an electron (much smaller than an atom!), maintains a superposition state of 0 and 1 at the same time, unlike a conventional computer bit, which must be 0 or 1.

Lab equipment doesn't monitor the qubit when it's in the middle of quantum computing processing. Lab equipment measures the results of processing. Because as you and Heisenberg know, once you observe or measure the qubit, its superposition will collapse and become a known state - just like a regular computer bit (0 or 1).

[sasquatch]

Not a true observation but this is an interesting device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_force_microscopy

[norwaypinesavage]

"(changing it by observing it)"

Physicists have a different definition of "observing" than you or I do. If you observe a jet flying overhead, you don't change it by looking at it, and it doesn't behave any differently if 1, or 100,000, or zero people observe it. It is changed, though, by being observable.

To "observe" something as tiny as an atom, means that you must measure its properties. It's the measurement process that alters it. That's what "observing" means.