Running Head: QUANTUM LEAP PHYSICISTS GOVERNMENTS 1

Quantum Leap For Physicists and Governments

Hanjie Wang
University of California, Santa Barbara
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There is a piece of news that recently set the whole physics community on fire. UCSB/Google

science group recently announced that they finished a computation that will take up to 10,000

years on classical supercomputer within 200 seconds on a quantum computer. This huge leap in

the speed of computation undoubtfully marks a milestone for quantum computing research

(Fernandez, 2019, para.2, para.4). Quantum information science (QIS), including quantum

communication and quantum computation, has attracted attentions from multiple disciplines. Not

only physicists but also policymakers are interested in the potential of the application of quantum

physics. The disciplines of government and the discipline of physics have now been among the

most related realm with QIS. Since these two disciplines are different in many perspectives:

topics, methodologies, and ways of seeing the world, there can be huge differences on writing

conventions (Hyland, 2006, p.38), especially on the use of evidence. In this passage, I am going

to discover how the use of evidence can be different across disciplines and find underlying

reasons based on audiences, writing goals, and writing conventions.

The two articles I chose for my analysis are Air-to-ground Quantum Communication from

Sebastian et.al. (2013), and National Quantum Initiative Act from Committee on Commerce,

Science, and Transportation (2018). Air-to-ground Quantum Communication is a scholarly essay

introducing how Sebastian et.al. realize long-range quantum communication between non-

stationary systems, while National Quantum Initiative Act is a government act brought out by the

committee to introduce the importance of QIS and to urge the congress provide more support for

quantum physics development.

The most distinct difference between disciplines is audiences. In fact, audiences can be regarded

as one of the most important elements affecting evidence-using patterns. Air-to-ground Quantum

Communication is written to peer experts studying similar topics, while National Quantum
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Initiative Act targets congressmen. According to Lunsford, Ruszkiewics, and Walters (2004), the

success of a passage relies partly on how the audiences’ expectations can be fulfilled. Obviously,

physicists and senators must have distinct expectations on their readings. Therefore, authors must

use different writing strategies, including the strategies on evidence using, to satisfy these two

audience groups respectively.

The first difference on evidence-using pattern is on the pathos perspective of evidence. Evidence

in scientific essays is plain and objective, while evidence in the act contains subjective emotions.

The goal of writing scientific essays, in most cases, is to inform the science community what the

authors have achieved. Sebastian et.al. (2013) wrote and published Air-to-ground Quantum

Communication because they think they have found a method realizing stable long-range

quantum communication between moving targets (p.382). In this way, the authors use evidence

only to prove their theorems and discoveries. Hence, the tone is more academic, and emotions

are impossible to be added in evidence. If you go through Air-to-ground Quantum

Communication, even in the least academic part: the introduction, you cannot feel any emotions

from authors. Therefore, writers of scientific essays tend not to include pathos in their use of

evidences.

In the act, however, the releasing of emotions in the evidence is much more obvious. When

providing backgrounds for QIS development, the authors include two sets of evidence. The first

one is megaprojects on QIS provided by US’s major competitors, and the second one is the

absence of long-term plans for United States (CCST, 2018, p.2). The problem sets prove the

situation of insufficient state support for quantum physics development. Moreover, they form a

comparison between U.S. and other major economies to showcase the authors’ anxiety on the

risk of falling behind. The inclusion of pathos in evidence may seem weird, but in an initiative, it
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can generate positive effects. Unlike scientific essays, an initiative act is composed to persuade

the discourse community – other senators. Members within the same discourse community don’t

necessarily agree with each other (Melzer, 2011, p.271). In the field of policy making, this

conflict can even more severe since different senators represent different interest group. In order

to persuade most members in the congress to agree with the act, the authors must strengthen the

arguments by various methods. One effective way is to use emotion. Just like the not-to-drive-

after-drinking advertisement provided by Lunsford, Ruszkiewics, and Walters (2004) in

“Everything is an argument” which catches people’s common fear for death (p.99), the writers of

the act utilized the senators’ common fear of their country falling behind. Then, the fear is

melted into the evidence to make the argument even more persuasive.

Besides tones, the types of evidence used are different in these two disciplines. I would like to

divide evidence into two types: author-produced evidence and cited evidence. Author-produced

evidence is evidence that created by authors, including the graphs and statistics of experiment

results, pictures of equipment used, and calculation process etc. In Air-to-ground Quantum

Communication, most evidence cited is author-produced ones. Sebastian et.al. (2013) included

numerous pictures of tools (p.383), newly invented models (p.384), and graphs of measurement

results (p.385), not mentioning the detailed description of experiment processes. Such evidence-

using pattern is not only limited to the essay I chose but can be found across the whole science

community. In fact, the inclusion of as much author-produced evidence as possible is one

significant writing convention in science discipline. This is because people in the discipline of

science share similar researching methods (Hyland, 2006, p.38). Before conducting research,

experts will read their peer’s previous research to look for inspirations and limitations. This

researching method requires essay writers to accurately record their research methodologies and
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experiment results, otherwise the essay is useless to its audiences. Thus, the requirement bursts

the amount of author-produced evidence within scientific essays because researchers usually

have their own methods and their results can be generated only by their experiments. In this way,

author-produced evidence takes up the majority in scientific essays.

As a contrast, author-produced evidence can hardly be found in National Quantum Initiative Act.

If you go through the act, you will find that the authors did not bring any details from their own

research – we don’t even know whether they did research or not. This is because the discipline of

government and the discipline of physics are different. Unlike in physics where what the authors

have done are significant, the effects of research conducted by individuals within government

discipline are trivial. Sometimes these author-produced evidence can even create negative effects

because of the complexity in policymaking. Essays in the discipline of physics usually create a

speculation first and then use various methods to justify the speculation. In government

disciplines, however, all the acts are only to make speculations to the future. Only exceptionally

large amount of historical data can generate a relatively accurate guess on the final number, and

the quantity of data required has far beyond individual power. If “I did it” is included in an

initiative act to support an estimation on budgets, the effectiveness on this evidence must be

challenged by peer senators.

Unlike author-produced evidence, cited evidence can be found in both essays, but the functions

are different. Cited evidence is evidence cited from sources created by other authors. In Air-to-

ground Quantum Communication, cited sources appear mostly in the introduction paragraph.

Sebastian et.al. (2013) included research ranging from 1989 to 2012 (p.382) not only to add

credibility to their research but also to raise their research’s importance. If you go through the

reference list, you can find that all the research cited are published in major science journals such
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as Nature. In other words, the previous research can all be considered as significant scientific

discoveries. After listing out previous research, Sebastian et.al. (2013) pointed out a common

limitation of these research: these communications are all formed between stationary systems

(p.382). In this way, what the authors want to state is that their research has solved a major issue

that cannot be conquered in previous research. The significance of the research of Sebastian et.al.

is further strengthened. Therefore, the cited evidence in essays of physics discipline serves as a

complement to author-produced evidence. The cited evidence emphasizes the importance of the

essay which is unable to be achieved only by author-produced evidence.

On the other hand, the function of cited evidence in the initiative act is like author-produced

evidence in scientific essays. Most evidence in the act is cited evidence from various

organizations and institutions, and they are used to justify estimations made by the authors. In

National Quantum Initiative Act, cited evidence appeared with the largest density when the

author is estimating budgets. CCST listed a table with estimations on budget provided by

different organizations. Also, to further justify their speculation, they cited a congressional

research report (p.5). Since individual research are ineffective in supporting thesis, the authors

turned their attention to authoritative institutions. This is a clever strategy, because if the budget

required by each organization and institution can be listed, the total amount given later in the text

will be much more reasonable for the congress.

Nevertheless, when I furthered my reading, I found that not all evidence in the act produced

similar robust support. For example, when providing the budget required for the setting up of

national quantum coordinating office, CCST (2018) only blurrily states that the number is based

on “programs of similar size and scope” (p.5). For readers, this blurriness may lead to confusions

because they don’t know where the source came from (Stedman, 2011, p.253). The readers
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didn’t know neither which programs were used as a scale nor what is the scope of these

programs, so it is reasonable that audiences may challenge the credibility of this speculation.

As a conclusion, there is a huge evidence using pattern between the discipline of physics and the

discipline of government. From the analysis of these two essays, we can see how audiences,

writing conventions, and writing goals can shape the use of evidence. From my perspective, I

prefer the Air-to-ground Quantum Communication in terms of evidence using. There are more

types of evidence in this essay, and each evidence is reasonably arranged. Also, the evidence-

using pattern fits better with the expectation from audiences. Therefore, for me, it is more

comfortable to read Air-to-ground Quantum Communication than to read National Quantum

Initiative Act.
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Work Cited:

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, Transportation author, &

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, Transportation, author.

(2018). National Quantum Initiative Act : Report of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and

Transportation on S. 3143. (United States. Congress. Senate. Report; 115-389). Washington:

U.S. Government Publishing Office.

Nauerth, S., Moll, F., Rau, M., Fuchs, C., Horwath, J., Frick, S., & Weinfurter, H. (2013). Air-to-

ground quantum communication. Nature Photonics, 7(5), 382.

Fernandez, S. (2019). Achieving Quantum Supremacy. Retrieved from

https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2019/019682/achieving-quantum-supremacy

Hyland, K. (2006). English for academic purposes: An advanced resource book. Routledge.

Lunsford, A. A., Ruszkiewicz, J. J., & Walters, K. (2004). Everything's an Argument. Boston:

Bedford/St. Martin's.

Stedman, K. D. (2011). Annoying ways people use sources. Writing spaces: Readings on

writing, 242.

Melzer, D. (2011). Exploring college writing : Reading, writing and researching across the

curriculum (Frameworks for writing). Sheffield ; Oakville, CT: Equinox Pub