Am I the only one here that sees the contradiction.

In one breathe we are saying that the total number of bits of information in a 298-qubit state is equivalent to the number of bits in the universe. Then in the next breathe we are saying that Seth Lloyd has computed that total number of bits in the universe as ~10^90.

Suppose in 50 years it is quite easy to create a quantum computer capable of computing a 298-qubit state. This might be a monstrosity of a computer at first (much like the warehouse sized mainframe computers of the early to mid 20th century). So then we move on a create a Quantum supercomputer capable of a 1000-qubit state. This would represent a 10^301 bits of information which is vastly greater than the upper limit that seth lloyd has computed. using this logical argument we can see that the number of bits of information that the universe can hold has always been vastly greater than 10^90. It’s probably more on the order of 10^(10^100)

Why stop at pondering the computation excellence of a 250-qubit state. Let us imagine the computational possibilities of a 1,000,000 qubit state. Truly astronomical implications.

-Gerald

Matthias Steffen, manager of the experimental quantum computing group, provided the following:

“The calculation is straight forward: 250 qubits means 2^250 states in a superposition which is about 1.8 x 10^75 atoms!! This is near the best estimates of the total number of atoms in the universe. There is no specific citation, but many others have used this analogy.”

(Note: Seth Lloyd has calculated the maximum number of bits available for computation n the observable universe as ~10^90 in his book Programming the Universe. That corresponds to 2^298 in base 2, or 298 qubits. See Computational capacity of the universe, http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0110141v1.pdf — this is a correction to this comment.)

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I wanted to comment

Indeed weird math as
10 power 80 is more than 2 power 250

However 2 power 270 is more than 10 power 80

So no big deal as one could surely build up a 270 qubits computer scaling up from a 250 one.

So no big deal as one could surely build up a 270 qubits computer scaling up from a 250 one.

Are we talking about the Observable Universe?