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The First Practical Use For Quantum Computers: Chemistry (technologyreview.com)
"The first quantum computer to start paying its way with useful work in the real world looks likely to do so by helping chemists," writes MIT Technology Review, "trying to do things like improve batteries or electronics." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
So far, simulating molecules and reactions is the use case for early, small quantum computers sketched out in most detail by researchers developing the new kind of algorithms needed for such machines... "From the point of view of what is theoretically proven, chemistry is ahead," says Scott Crowder, chief technology officer for the IBM division that today sells hardware including supercomputers and hopes to add cloud-hosted quantum computers to its product line-up in the next few years...
Researchers have long used simulations of molecules and chemical reactions to aid research into things like new materials, drugs, or industrial catalysts. The tactic can reduce time spent on physical experiments and scientific dead ends, and it accounts for a significant proportion of the workload of the world's supercomputers. Yet the payoffs are limited because even the most powerful supercomputers cannot perfectly re-create all the complex quantum behaviors of atoms and electrons in even relatively small molecules, says Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a chemistry professor at Harvard. He's looking forward to the day simulations on quantum computers can accelerate his research group's efforts to find new light-emitting molecules for displays, for example, and batteries suitable for grid-scale energy storage.
Microsoft is already focusing on chemistry and materials science in its quantum algorithm effort, saying a hybrid system combining conventional computers with a small quantum computer "has great promise for studying molecules." Meanwhile, the article argues that breaking encryption, "although a genuine threat, is one of the most distant applications of the technology, because the algorithms involved would require an extremely large quantum processor."
Researchers have long used simulations of molecules and chemical reactions to aid research into things like new materials, drugs, or industrial catalysts. The tactic can reduce time spent on physical experiments and scientific dead ends, and it accounts for a significant proportion of the workload of the world's supercomputers. Yet the payoffs are limited because even the most powerful supercomputers cannot perfectly re-create all the complex quantum behaviors of atoms and electrons in even relatively small molecules, says Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a chemistry professor at Harvard. He's looking forward to the day simulations on quantum computers can accelerate his research group's efforts to find new light-emitting molecules for displays, for example, and batteries suitable for grid-scale energy storage.
Microsoft is already focusing on chemistry and materials science in its quantum algorithm effort, saying a hybrid system combining conventional computers with a small quantum computer "has great promise for studying molecules." Meanwhile, the article argues that breaking encryption, "although a genuine threat, is one of the most distant applications of the technology, because the algorithms involved would require an extremely large quantum processor."
So... we use a quantum computer to simulate... a quantum computer? LOL
But nothing report here is particularly new. It has been known for quite some time now that breaking encryption takes a lot of qubits, whereas quantum chemistry can be accelerated with relative modest qubits amounts, assuming they can implement universal QC gate model operations.
So I guess we are not counting the NSA's code breaking quantum computer. Why not? I might be classified as secret, but it's hardly secret.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Physics is a superset of chemistry.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Simulating quantum computers, of course!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
This is backwards. Physics encompasses it all. Physics isn't just baseball trajectories and planetary orbits, it is also the subatomic realm, and all the forces including those that are responsible for chemical interactions.
It's all just a special case of mathematics
Seems to me the folks on the right, particularly the far right, want to go back to a time that never was or worse than now, than we have now. I'd rather be in the now and a better future given some of the problems of the past that have been solved, though the solutions haven't reached everywhere. I'm thinking particularly about SMOG in such places as southern California but not Beijing, health insurance in Germany or Sweden than the confusion we have in the US, and other situations. There's always the situation where new problems show up and need solutions, but ignoring them won't solve them.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Slashdotters will still have to rely on Tinder.
Have gnu, will travel.
This has been the idea from the beginning.
to allude to the concept of bits and making logic gates second class citizens not to be mentioned.
Physics is a superset of chemistry.
I guess that depends if you're talking to a physicist or a chemist.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The first practical use of quantum computers was scaring cryptographers and causing them to invent post-quantum cryptography to protect our information. The amazing thing is that they managed to do this without physically existing.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
No. Mathematics is used to make models that describe reality. But those models are not reality. Reality is not mathematics.
-- Cheers!
Really ? you seem very certain of that.