Adam Brown, a researcher at Google and a physicist at Stanford University, has discovered an unexpected link between pi, theoretical block collisions and the famous Grover’s quantum search algorithm.
Two playful papers, one from 2003 and one from last month, provide this link. Together, they connect the worlds of dynamics, geometry and quantum computation. The scientist discovered that the math explaining these block dynamics is actually identical to the math explaining one of the most famous quantum algorithms.
These connections highlight the power of a universal mathematical language. Using vectors to encode the state of a physical system works just as well with macro-scale block collisions as it does with micro-scale quantum states. (QuantaMagazine)