{"id":28037,"date":"2016-07-19T19:49:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T02:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/quantum-computers-show-potential-to-revolutionize-chemistry"},"modified":"2017-04-25T19:52:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T02:52:58","slug":"quantum-computers-show-potential-to-revolutionize-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/quantum-computers-show-potential-to-revolutionize-chemistry","title":{"rendered":"Quantum computers show potential to revolutionize chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"http:\/\/img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/tenant\/amp\/entityid\/BBuvdAL.img\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Like this feature on QC.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>If you have trouble wrapping your mind around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2014\/12\/22\/quantum-physics-math-discovery\/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618\">quantum physics<\/a>, don\u2019t worry \u2014 it\u2019s even hard for supercomputers. The solution, according to researchers from Google, Harvard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and others? Why, use a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2015\/12\/09\/google-we-have-proof-that-our-quantum-computer-really-works\/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618\">quantum computer<\/a>, of course. The team accurately predicted chemical reaction rates using a supercooled quantum circuit, a result that could lead to improved solar cells, batteries, flexible electronics and much more.<\/p>\n<p>Chemical reactions are inherently quantum themselves \u2014 the team actually used a quote from Richard Feynman saying \u201cnature isn\u2019t classical, dammit.\u201d The problem is that \u201cmolecular systems form highly entangled quantum superposition states, which require many classical computing resources in order to represent sufficiently high precision,\u201d according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/research.googleblog.com\/2016\/07\/towards-exact-quantum-description-of.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618\">Google Research blog<\/a>. Computing the lowest energy state for propane, a relatively simple molecule, takes around ten days, for instance. That figure is required in order to get the reaction rate.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s where the \u201cXmon\u201d supercooled qubit quantum computing circuit (shown above) comes in. The device, known as a \u201cvariational quantum eigensolver (VQE)\u201d is the quantum equivalent of a classic neural network. The difference is that you train a classical neural circuit (like Google\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2016\/03\/14\/the-final-lee-sedol-vs-alphago-match-is-about-to-start\/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618\">DeepMind AI<\/a>) to model classical data, and train the VQE to model quantum data. \u201cThe quantum advantage of VQE is that quantum bits can efficiently represent the molecular wave function, whereas exponentially many classical bits would be required.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/other\/quantum-computers-show-potential-to-revolutionize-chemistry\/ar-BBuv6dH\">http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/other\/quantum-computers-show-p...ar-BBuv6dH<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like this feature on QC. If you have trouble wrapping your mind around quantum physics, don\u2019t worry \u2014 it\u2019s even hard for supercomputers. The solution, according to researchers from Google, Harvard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and others? Why, use a quantum computer, of course. The team accurately predicted chemical reaction rates using a supercooled quantum [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,47,1617,6,1633,44,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-neuroscience","category-quantum-physics","category-robotics-ai","category-solar-power","category-supercomputing","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40619,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28037\/revisions\/40619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}