译者按：量子科技看似高深，但很可能离现实生活并不遥远了。本文将向你描述量子技术的应用前景以及目前正在发生的变革。虽然普通人很难理解其内在的机理，但有理由相信，世界会因为这种科技变得更好。
本文译自《经济学人》3月11日刊。
Quantum leaps
量子跳跃
After a century stuck in textbooks, mind-bending quantum effects are about to power mainstream innovation
困在教科书一个世纪之后，难以理解的量子效应即将为主流创新提供动力
mind-bending: difficult to understand
e.g. Infinity in space is a mind-bending concept.
- A BATHING cap that can watch individual neurons, allowing others to monitor the wearer’s mind. A sensor that can spot hidden nuclear submarines. A computer that can discover new drugs, revolutionise securities trading and design new materials. A global network of communication links whose security is underwritten by unbreakable physical laws. Such—and more—is the promise of quantum technology.
underwrite: to support an activity, business plan etc with money, and to take financial responsibility if it fails
e.g. The government has agreed to underwrite the project with a grant of £5 million.
1）一顶可以观察单个神经元的游泳帽，允许其他人监视佩戴者的思想。一种可以发现隐藏的核潜艇的传感器。一台可以发明新药，革新证券交易和设计新材料的计算机。一个由牢不可破的物理定律保证其安全性的全球通信网络。这些以及更多（的可能）是量子技术的前景。
- All this potential arises from improvements in scientists’ ability to trap, poke and prod single atoms and wispy particles of light called photons. Today’s computer chips get cheaper and faster as their features get smaller, but quantum mechanics says that at tiny enough scales, particles sail through solids, short-circuiting the chip’s innards. Quantum technologies come at the problem from the other direction. Rather than scale devices down, quantum technologies employ the unusual behaviours of single atoms and particles and scale them up. Like computerisation before it, this unlocks a world of possibilities, with applications in nearly every existing industry—and the potential to spark entirely new ones.
come at the problem: to consider or deal with a problem in a particular way = approach
e.g. We need to come at the problem from a different angle.
2）所有这些潜力来自于科学家捕获、捅戳和刺激单个原子和称为光子的小束光粒子的能力的提高。今天的计算机芯片更便宜更快，而且它们的体积越来越小，但量子力学认为，在尺寸足够小时，粒子会穿过固体，使芯片的内部短路。量子技术从另一个方向来处理这个问题。量子技术不是将设备缩小，而是利用单原子和粒子的异常行为，并将其放大。像之前的计算机化一样，这解锁一个充满各种可能性的世界，在几乎所有现有行业中都有应用，并且有可能激发出全新的行业。
Strange but true
奇怪但是真实
- Quantum mechanics—a theory of the behaviour at the atomic level put together in the early 20th century—has a well-earned reputation for weirdness. That is because the world as humanity sees it is not, in fact, how the world works. Quantum mechanics replaced wholesale the centuries-old notion of a clockwork, deterministic universe with a reality that deals in probabilities rather than certainties—one where the very act of measurement affects what is measured. Along with that upheaval came a few truly mind-bending implications, such as the fact that particles are fundamentally neither here nor there but, until pinned down, both here and there at the same time: they are in a “superposition” of here-there-ness. The theory also suggested that particles can be spookily linked: do something to one and the change is felt instantaneously by the other, even across vast reaches of space. This “entanglement” confounded even the theory’s originators.
wholesale : Extensively; indiscriminately;
clockwork: in an extremely exact way;
3）量子力学——一种在20世纪早期提出的、发生在原子层面的行为的理论—— 以怪异著称。这是因为人类看到的世界，事实上，并不是世界运转的方式。量子力学整体取代了延续几百年的精确的、确定性的宇宙的观念，它（观念中）的现实是处理概率而不是确定性—— 其中测量的行为会影响被测量物。随着这场剧变而来的是一些真正难以理解的推论，例如粒子从根本上说既不在这儿也不在那儿，而是直到被固定之前，同时在这儿又在那儿：它们是在“这儿”和“那儿”的“叠加态”。这个理论还表明，粒子可以被诡异地联系起来：影响一个粒子，另一个会瞬间感受到变化，即使相隔广阔的空间。这种“纠缠”甚至使理论的创始人也感到费解。
- It is exactly these effects that show such promise now: the techniques that were refined in a bid to learn more about the quantum world are now being harnessed to put it to good use. Gizmos that exploit superposition and entanglement can vastly outperform existing ones—and accomplish things once thought to be impossible.
bid: an attempt to achieve or obtain something
e.g. a bid for power
e.g. a desperate bid to free herself from a loveless marriage
4）正是这些效应现在展现出这样的前景：试图了解量子世界而精心改进的技术现在正在被利用以使其发挥作用。利用叠加态和纠缠态的小装置表现可以大大优于现有设备——并完成之前被认为是不可能的事情。
Improving atomic clocks by incorporating entanglement, for example, makes them more accurate than those used today in satellite positioning. That could improve navigational precision by orders of magnitude, which would make self-driving cars safer and more reliable. And because the strength of the local gravitational field affects the flow of time (according to general relativity, another immensely successful but counter-intuitive theory), such clocks would also be able to measure tiny variations in gravity. That could be used to spot underground pipes without having to dig up the road, or track submarines far below the waves.
5）例如，通过合并纠缠态改进原子钟，使得它们比目前在卫星定位中使用的钟更准确。这可以把导航精度提高几个数量级，将使自动驾驶汽车更安全更可靠。并且因为局部重力场的强度影响时间的流动（根据另一个非常成功但是反直觉的理论——广义相对论），这样的时钟也将能够测量重力的微小变化。这可以用来发现地下管道，而不必挖开道路，或跟踪远在海面之下的潜艇。Other aspects of quantum theory permit messaging without worries about eavesdroppers. Signals encoded using either superposed or entangled particles cannot be intercepted, duplicated and passed on. That has obvious appeal to companies and governments the world over. China has already launched a satellite that can receive and reroute such signals; a global, unhackable network could eventually follow.
6）量子理论的其他方面可以让消息传送不用担心窃听者。无论使用叠加态还是纠缠态粒子编码的信号不能被截取，复制和传递。这对世界各地的公司和政府具有明显的吸引力。中国已经发射了一个可以接收和重新路由这种信号的卫星；一个全球性的、无法破解的网络最终可能会出现。The advantageous interplay between odd quantum effects reaches its zenith in quantum computers. Rather than the 0s and 1s of standard computing, a quantum computer’s bits are in superpositions of both, and each “qubit” is entangled with every other. Using algorithms that recast problems in quantum-amenable forms, such computers will be able to chomp their way through calculations that would take today’s best supercomputers millennia. Even as high-security quantum networks are being developed, a countervailing worry is that quantum computers will eventually render obsolete today’s cryptographic techniques, which are based on hard mathematical problems.
chomp their way through: If a person or animal chomps their way through food or chomps on food, they chew it noisily.
countervailing : with an equally strong but opposite effect
7）不寻常的量子效应之间有益的相互影响在量子计算机上达到其顶点。与常规计算使用的0和1不同，量子计算机的比特是两者的叠加，每个“量子比特”彼此纠缠在一起。通过使用以符合量子形式重现问题的算法，这样的计算机将能够大口咀嚼掉当今最好的超级计算机花一千年才能完成的计算。即使高安全性能的量子网络正在开发，与之相对同样强烈的担心是，量子计算机将最终淘汰今天基于数学难题的加密技术。
- Long before that happens, however, smaller quantum computers will make other contributions in industries from energy and logistics to drug design and finance. Even simple quantum computers should be able to tackle classes of problems that choke conventional machines, such as optimising trading strategies or plucking promising drug candidates from scientific literature. Google said last week that such machines are only five years from commercial exploitability. This week IBM, which already runs a publicly accessible, rudimentary quantum computer, announced expansion plans. As our Technology Quarterly in this issue explains, big tech firms and startups alike are developing software to exploit these devices’ curious abilities. A new ecosystem of middlemen is emerging to match new hardware to industries that might benefit.
curious : strange or unusual
e.g. a curious coincidence
e.g. It's curious that she left without saying goodbye.
8）然而，在这些发生之前，较小的量子计算机将在能源和物流、药物设计和金融等行业做出其他贡献。即使简单的量子计算机也应该能够处理那些常规机器无法解决的各类问题，例如优化交易策略或从科学文献中选摘出有希望的候选药物。谷歌上周说，这样的机器还有五年就能投入商业使用。IBM已经运行着一台公众可以使用的初级量子计算机，本周宣布了扩展计划。正如我们本期《科技季刊》解释的那样，大型科技公司和初创公司都在开发软件来利用这些设备不同寻常的能力。一个新的中间生态系统正在出现，以将新的硬件与可能受益的行业相匹配。
The solace of quantum
量子的安慰
This landscape has much in common with the state of the internet in the early 1990s: a largely laboratory-based affair that had occupied scientists for decades, but in which industry was starting to see broader potential. Blue-chip firms are buying into it, or developing their own research efforts. Startups are multiplying. Governments are investing “strategically”, having paid for the underlying research for many years—a reminder that there are some goods, such as blue-sky scientific work, that markets cannot be relied upon to provide.
9）这个景观与20世纪90年代初的互联网状态有很多共同之处：一项大体上处于实验室阶段的事物花费了科学家几十年时间，但是业界正开始在其中看到更广阔的潜力。蓝筹公司（大公司）正在购买它，或者在进行自己的研发。创业公司正在迅速增加。政府正在进行“战略性”投资，已经为基础研究买了很多年单，这也提醒人们有些东西，比如纯理论科学工作，不能依靠市场提供。Fortunately for quantum technologists, the remaining challenges are mostly engineering ones, rather than scientific. And today’s quantum-enhanced gizmos are just the beginning. What is most exciting about quantum technology is its as yet untapped potential. Experts at the frontier of any transformative technology have a spotty record of foreseeing many of the uses it will find; Thomas Edison thought his phonograph’s strength would lie in elocution lessons. For much of the 20th century “quantum” has, in the popular consciousness, simply signified “weird”. In the 21st, it will come to mean “better”.
as yet: up to the present or a specified time
spotty: good only in some parts, but not in other parts
10）对于量子技术专家幸运的是，剩下的挑战大多是工程技术上的，而不是科学理论上的。而今天的量子增强的小装置只是开始。量子技术最令人兴奋的是它迄今为止尚未开发的潜力。任何在变革性技术前沿的专家在预测技术的许多应用时的记录时好时坏；托马斯爱迪生认为他的留声机的长处将在于演讲课上。在20世纪的大部分时间里，“量子”在大众意识中只代表着“奇怪”。在21世纪，它将意味着“更好”。
试着翻译如下句子：
1、量子技术从另一个方向来处理这个问题。
2、即使高安全性能的量子网络正在开发，与之相对同样强烈的担心是，量子计算机将最终淘汰今天基于数学难题的加密技术。
3、即使简单的量子计算机也应该能够处理那些常规机器无法解决的各类问题，例如优化交易策略或从科学文献中选摘出有希望的候选药物。
4、这个景观与20世纪90年代初的互联网状态有很多共同之处。
5、量子技术最令人兴奋的是它迄今为止尚未开发的潜力。
原文出处：经济学人杂志
译者：七呵夫
本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。