Google has shattered the glass ceiling of expectations once again. It has achieved something of such high calibre that it has sent shockwaves not only in the field of computer science, but also quantum physics. Google’s quantum supercomputer has broken the record for the fastest calculation ever done, and we can’t help but gape in wonder as to what implications this discovery has on the world.
Willow – the headline maker
Google’s recently unveiled quantum computing chip – Willow – has surged ahead of all supercomputers in the world. It has performed a computation that would take the fastest of supercomputers of the age ten septillion years to complete. That’s 1025 years! Wait a minute! What’s the age of the universe?
The age of the universe runs in billions. A septillion is 10,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than a billion.
That means the time to be taken by the second fastest supercomputer of the day is unimaginably larger than the age of the universe. A supercomputer would not have been able to do the calculation since the beginning of time to date what Google’s Willow has done under five minutes. Considering the fact that a septillion year exceeds the timescales in physics and outruns the age of the universe, it is mindboggling as to how could Willow do the computation so fast.
Is this proof of parallel universe?
Some experts believe that quantum computers do not complete the entire computation in just one realm, rather the computation occurs in multiple universes. Quantum computers leverage the concept of quantum entanglement, whereby qubits can exist in the states of 0, 1 or both simultaneously.
Quantum entanglement – which refers to a link between particles despite the distance between them – allows for one particle to influence the other no matter how far off they are.
Qubits and quantum entanglement have given life to the possibility of quantum computations happening in parallel universes. Floated by physicist David Deutsch, the idea of multiverse says that we all exist across several parallel universes, with each having its distinct series of events. Deutsch suggested that quantum calculations happen across multiple universes at the same time. And since each part of the larger computation gets completed in separate universes, the speed to achieve the final result is meteorically faster.
How Google achieved the computation?
Qubits are very fragile. The slightest of environmental disturbance can throw the quantum computation off track. This is why scientists and quantum researchers were sceptical about using more bits for calculation, as it could increase the likelihood of environment-led disturbance and hence, the likelihood of errors. However, Google has a different opinion.
Google said that adding more qubits led to reduction of errors, making the system increasingly quantum.
Willow is said to be the most accurate and convincing prototype of logical qubit so far. The reduction in quantum error in conjunction with addition of qubits to the process has given a new lease of life to the research on quantum computing.
Not everyone is convinced though
Some critics have emerged raising speculations on the claims made by Google. For example, German physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, has stated that the concerned computation was meant to just produce a random distribution. Therefore, the result of this calculation must have no practical use.
The physicist also said that researchers have randomly stated “septillion years” as the time to be taken for such computation, just because they know that the computation is difficult to do on a conventional computer.
Even though Willow achieved its glory under five minutes being a 100-qubit chip, the same calculation was done in 2019 on a 50-bit chip as well. Hossenfelder suggested that we need systems utilizing one million qubits for practically meaningful applications and the days of using a million qubits is still far away.
What it means for our Tomorrow?
The message is simple, loud and clear. Humanity has taken a leap towards hyper-fast computation. Regardless of how practically useful Willow’s computation is, there is no doubt that Willow has furthered our milestones of computation like no other computer has done before. The time is ripe for advanced research on quantum mechanics, quantum computing and multiverse, and he coming ages will see us performing computations that could impress even the Almighty sitting in heaven.
