I'm going to paraphrase what my chemistry teacher briefly explained in my class, and want to know what you think...
Is he on crack, or is there some validity to this far-fetched, theoretical hypothesis?Could a machine possibly read the energy level or number of electrons of an atom to derive solutions in "gray areas" rather than the Black-and-White processing of current machines, thus giving machines the ability to say "maybe"?
Every element on the periodic table has properties, based primarily on electrons. Could we create a "chemical" computer that is based on the readings of these properties, coming from a core, a cocktail of elements rapidly changing, manipulated as required, and being read? Instead of basing our computers on the simple on/off of transistors, what about basing them off of the readings coming from a mix of atoms?
Current computers are based on transistors that turn "on" or "off", rapidly, to create the basis of binary. However, more complex computers could be created using, as a basis, the properties of various atoms/elements, like how many electrons the atom has, and at what energy level they are at, to create more complex thinking. Of course, we would create a "key" from which the output of the computer would translate into language or other complex calculations.