This year marks a century since the discovery of quantum mechanics. This breakthrough helped people understand that the laws of physics that control the world around us at its smallest level – molecules, atoms and subatomic particles – are fundamentally different from the laws that regulate the way we interact with objects in our everyday lives. Quantum Mechanics has enabled us to understand the details of everything from the metabolic processes in our blood currents to the electric batteries that drive our cars and computers, and to discoveries from lasers to semiconductors.
Quantum mechanics transformed the way we understand the natural world, and yet it was not until 1981 that the famous physicist Richard Feynman observed that since the world is quantified, if we really wanted a computer to effectively simulate the whole natural world, humanity would probably have to build a quantum computer.
Over the course of more than a decade of scientific progress, Google has made significant progress towards our vision of building a large -scale, error -corrected quantum computers that can solve otherwise impossible problems. To celebrate the world’s quantum day, let’s explore three areas where quantum computers could improve lives.
1. Better medicine
Researchers still have a lot to learn about the complex biological systems of human body, and quantum computers can help us gain a deeper understanding – such as helping to understand key systems that relate to drug design and our metabolism. By calculating how certain drug candidates will interact with their goals and other biological molecules, quantum computers can help us design more effective treatments and promote medicine. As an example, in collaboration with the Pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim, we have shown that quantum computers will be able to simulate a key structure of cytochrome P450, an enzyme found in humans, with higher accuracy in shorter time than classic computers. Cytochrome P450 is a critical enzyme for determining medicinal efficiency because it breaks down drugs in our bloodstream.
2. Better batteries
The world’s need for energy – and the ability to store it – grows every year. We are investigating the way in which quantum computers will be able to help design new materials. For example, we have explored in collaboration with the chemical company BASF that quantum computers will be able to accurately simulate lithium nickel oxide (LNO), a material used in batteries. LNO is difficult to produce industrial and aspects of its chemistry are not well understood, but it offers a less environmental footprint than commonly used lithium -coaltoxide, and we have even explored alternatives for the use of cobalt in batteries. Simulation of the quantum mechanical behavior of LNO could improve the industrial production process and ultimately help us create better batteries.
3. New energy sources
Fusion Energy, the power source for stars, gives the promise of pure and ample energy – but it has not yet been realized in scale. Design of the necessary reactors depends on calculation models to understand materials under extreme fusion conditions. However, current models lack accuracy, often not to match results in the real world and demand billions of CPU hours. In collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, our researchers showed that a quantum algorithm that is run on a fault -tolerant quantum computer could more effectively simulate the mechanisms needed for sustained fusion reactions, which can ultimately help make fusion energy a reality.
This kind of progress in medicine and energy would be a big leap, and yet it can only scratch the surface of what could be possible with quantum calculation. Given the complexity of this technology, it could solve problems that we do not even know how to ask. But to realize the full potential of quantum calculation requires progress across the stack, including the building and scaling of better quubits; improvement of quantum fault correction; Development of new quantum algorithms and the use of them in the real world. No one can do this alone, so we continue to work with partners in academia, industry and the public sector to create the most advanced quantum calculation system in the world.