Quantum Death Machine
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
If you had a background in quantum physics, what would you build? A time machine? A teleporter? Or, a box that detects the presence of a human, then tells them how they’re going to die (based on utterly nothing)? Maker Gocivici decided to do the latter, and here it is: the Quantum Death Machine. It’s an audacious exercise in over-engineering, using IBM Quantum – an online quantum computer that can provide truly random data (randomness is something that computers struggle with on their own).
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It also uses a Raspberry Pi 3, an Adafruit thermal printer, an Arduino Nano, and a fingerprint sensor.
In use, the clever quantum computing is hidden away: the user sticks a finger into the opening where the sensor is mounted, the machine registers that you’re there, then it gives you a prediction of how you’ll meet your end. That’s it. It doesn’t ask if you smoke, drink too much, drive without a seatbelt on, or any of that; it just uses the randomness of quantum computing to print you a response from a pre-populated list of deaths.
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