A fifteen million dollar computer is not cheaper than programmers plus a standard desktop workstation, which can apparently perform the same tasks. And we're not talking about a super-easy system to use, either --- the D-Wave is is complicated to set up problems for, requiring very specialized programming work (and teams of Google/NASA engineers to even test out). So, D-Wave wins neither on convenience nor raw power; so far, it's only advantage appears to be quantum-buzzword marketing compatibility.

In King James' era, a "glass" might refer to a mirror as well as, e.g., a window-pane (think "looking glass"), so the term was probably a reasonable translation at the time. However, "mirror" is more likely for a modern translation --- hence "in a mirror, dimly" in some modern translations. In less likely possibilities, the Greek word could also refer to crude lenses and glass panes (which wouldn't have been very high optical quality).

Note, also, "darkly" in the Greek was (transliterated) "ainigmati," cognate to modern "enigmatic" --- my Greek lexicon (BDAG) gives that as "that which requires special acumen to understand because it is expressed in a puzzling fashion, a riddle," or, alternatively (and more in-line with modern translation), "an indirect mode of communication; indirectly" (as in, by reflection) when used in the context of mirrors.

The simple answer to your question, which is admitted by D-Wave when pressed (though not made obvious in their PR literature) is no, D-Wave cannot run Shor's algorithm. The D-Wave is definitely not a full quantum computer in the most general sense; at best, it can carry out a very limited subset of what a general-purpose quantum computer can do ("quantum annealing" problems). At worst (and nothing better has been conclusively demonstrated), it can't do anything you can't do with cheaper fully-classical hardware (using classical simulated annealing algorithms).

No, it's more like "I have a device, and it generates power. It costs less than what I pay the utility company*."
*: when I paid the utility company $14/kWh, which I specially arranged for a week.

D-Wave keeps claiming their system is faster/more-cost-effective --- then, a few months later, independent researchers show it's not when compared against well-designed classical approaches (rather than poorly-designed or not-apples-to-apples classical algorithms). So far, they have not managed to demonstrate a definitive advantage which holds up to scrutiny.

Too bad that D-Wave blog post you linked to is full of outright fabrications/distortions. The machine they have is an annealer, not a "fast NP-complete problem solver." It does not solve NP-complete problems. An NP-complete problem is, e.g., finding the best solution to a "traveling salesman" problem --- this computer doesn't do that. Finding a probably-good-but-not-the-single-best solution to a "travelling salesman" problem is not an NP-complete problem; there are polynomial-time classical algorithms that can "almost" solve these problems (annealing) already. So, if you're trying to prove that the architecture of the D-Wave chip has been transparently disclosed to the public, it doesn't help to link to a PR fluff piece full of intentional distortions.

Unfortunately, D-Wave's proprietary approach is getting in the way of proper "baby-steps" research. Before you go selling a zillion-qbit $15M black-box system, productive research would involve letting independent research groups perform stringent tests for "quantumness" on, e.g., a simplified 2-bit system. D-Wave is selling an obfuscated system, getting in the way of low-level bare-hardware fundamentals that really advance research.

Chances are, they don't know themselves exactly how "quantum" the system is. It's unlikely to be an outright fraud --- there's something other than a Core 2 Duo on the inside faking quantum results --- but a system working on the hairy edge of current technical understanding. They've built something that has a bunch of cryogenic doodads and performs annealing, but the technical understanding isn't all there. That said, they have demonstrated signs of acting in bad faith --- being very cagey about offering real details, and performing poorly-done comparisons against sub-optimal classical systems. So, they know that even they don't know whether the system they have lives up to claims, and are acting like a for-profit corporation rather than researchers with integrity about it.

Well, it doesn't matter what color you paint the box, so long as there are enough entangled cats inside. </highlytechnicaldescription>

And the book title is itself a biblical reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (King James Version) --- but I doubt the summary titler was alluding quite that far back.

The reason that the dark matter separates is the same reason that it follows a different distribution from visible matter in other galaxies (a diffuse blob instead of a galactic plane): whatever the stuff is, it's very weakly interacting with everything else (including other dark matter). Normal matter experiences "drag" as you push one cloud of it through another --- from the particles interacting and bouncing off of each other (or, at least, more gently being pushed by electromagnetic radiation from other particles). These interactions, as particles clump and stick and drag, are what allow a galaxy to collapse into a flat disc (instead of a big, amorphous gas cloud). But Dark Matter hardly feels this "drag" at all --- it's extremely "slippery," so two clouds will pass through each other virtually undisturbed. The lack of interactions also makes it really hard (impossible, so far) to catch DM in the lab.

The posters above didn't say "anti-Semitic," they said "anti-Israel." Please don't confuse the two (as murdocj is attempting to do by shifting from the issue of government versus private funds to "those Jews").

Newly-mined lead is not radioactive due to the sun or cosmogenic sources, but because of isotopes of lead which are produced from decays of uranium and thorium (which already existed from the supernova remnants that formed our current solar system) --- see here. So, you don't want lead that you've just mined from millions of years deep underground --- that stuff is still pretty hot. What you want is stuff that was mined by the Romans two millenia ago, separated from the underground crud full of uranium/thorium, and left to cool off since then.

Just about every kind of rock has background radiation of its own, which must be dealt with (some more than others). However, radiation from rocks is typically easier to deal with than cosmic rays from space --- it's lower energy stuff that can be blocked by a few extra layers of extra lead/copper shielding (carefully screened for even lower radioactivity), instead of energetic particles that go through hundreds of meters of material unhindered. You have to worry about things like radon (radioactive gas) seeping out of the rocks and getting into the equipment; but, these are known effects to watch out for deal with by proper ventilation/sealing.

We can make estimates of the amount of dust out there based on the light we see from distant stars. Where there is dust, it will scatter light passing through it (and modify the spectrum). There are lots of open questions about how much and what kind of dust is out there --- this isn't a "solved" problem --- however, best estimates plus known uncertainties don't put this within range of explaining dark matter. So, we still need dark matter to "make the math work out."

What collider experiments do look for is "missing mass" --- if the amount of stuff coming out doesn't add up to the stuff going in, minus known detector inefficiencies (indicating some new "invisible" particle being produced). So, people are looking for dark matter production --- anything that results in mass/energy being converted to unknown/undetectable forms --- in a systematic manner. You may not specifically be looking for "spacetime foam," but anything that doesn't mimic "ordinary" particles in firing detectors (thus would already be visible in existing DM searches) in sufficient quantities will be found.