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posted by takyon on Sunday August 30 2020, @04:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the quantum-zene dept.

Google Says It Just Ran The First-Ever Quantum Simulation of a Chemical Reaction:

Of the many high expectations we have of quantum technology, one of the most exciting has to be the ability to simulate chemistry on an unprecedented level. Now we have our first glimpse of what that might look like.

Together with a team of collaborators, the Google AI Quantum team has used their 54 qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, to simulate changes in the configuration of a molecule called diazene.

As far as chemical reactions go, it's one of the simplest ones we know of. Diazene is little more than a couple of nitrogens linked in a double bond, each towing a hydrogen atom.

However, the quantum computer accurately described changes in the positions of hydrogen to form different diazene isomers. The team also used their system to arrive at an accurate description of the binding energy of hydrogen in increasingly bigger chains.

Also at New Scientist.

Hartree-Fock on a superconducting qubit quantum computer (DOI: 10.1126/science.abb9811) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday August 30 2020, @05:51PM (3 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Sunday August 30 2020, @05:51PM (#1044242) Homepage Journal

    But so far its all: "We get this result, if we try thousands and thousands of times, and you tilt your head just right, on a Tuesday, with a full moon, and only if you don't ask any hard questions."

    It's starting to look a lot like fusion: actual, practical, usable technology will always be just 20 years away.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @08:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @08:05PM (#1044302)

    I'm sorry we have delivered great results for you. But on the plus side we have invaded Iraq twice. Possibly Iran soon.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:55PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:55PM (#1044377) Journal

    Simulations of chemistry and biology were already assumed to be a killer app of quantum computers. This story seems to confirm that it can be done.

    The problem is that a 54 qubit quantum computer is just crap. If they can scale a technology to millions or billions of real qubits (not error-correcting/fake qubits), then it could dominate for certain problems.

    Hardware has to be ironed out before the software can show its potential. If you build it, they will run.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:48PM (#1044583)

    Go and watch Star Trek if you want to live in a sci-fi fantasy where knowledge is the priority. Or even in the top 10 list of priorities.