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full screen Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Archive image. Photo: Eric Risberg/AP/TT
Google’s new computer chip runs circles around its predecessors. And indicates that we live in a multiverse.
On Monday, Google showed off a new so-called quantum computer chip, which represents a breakthrough for the technology.
The chip, called Willow, is said to be able to complete complex tasks in minutes that today’s leading supercomputers would take ten quadrillion years to complete, according to Google’s Hartmut Neven, who leads the development of quantum computers.
– It means a one followed by 25 zeros, says Neven, one of around 300 Google employees who are researching the new technology.
Impossibly high numbers
Willow’s figure, Neven believes, indicates that the calculations take place in parallel universes. For the number transcends physical time limits and the age of the universe.
– We live in a multiverse, says Neven.
The theory of the multiverse has its origins in the 1950s and roughly simplistically assumes that there are real parallel versions of all events – like a tree with many branches – which, however, cannot interact with each other.
Fewer errors
The quantum computer differs from a classical computer in that it does not use binary information with ones and zeros, but works with ones and zeros at the same time – which means that it can do an enormous number of calculations at the same time. What makes Willow better than previous attempts in the field is that the number of calculation errors is significantly fewer.
It is still a long way from practical use, according to Google, but CEO Sundar Pichai claims that the quantum computer can solve difficult challenges in areas such as climate change and fusion energy. Google itself talks about quantum computer technology in six steps, of which what has now been achieved with Willow is step two.
For Google, the breakthrough means that the company makes scientific history twice in the same week. On Tuesday, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind, will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for how AI can calculate protein folding.
FACT Quantum computers
The basic building blocks of a quantum computer are called quantum bits and are based on different principles than today’s computers. Put simply, a classic computer uses information, bits, in ones and zeros. Either or.
However, the quantum bits can also be one and zero at the same time. In addition, for each quantum bit, the number of possible values doubles, making quantum computers quickly superior to classical computers. A classic computer processes one number at a time. A quantum computer can do the same calculation on many numbers at the same time.
The number of quantum bits does not say everything about how powerful a quantum computer is, but at 300 quantum bits there are already more possible values than the number of particles in the entire observable universe.
Various discoveries in quantum mechanics were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2012 and 2022.
Sources: National encyclopedia and Chalmers et al
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