Google says it made a breakthrough toward practical quantum computing

Enabled by the introduction of its Willow quantum chip last year, Google today claims it's conducted breakthrough research that confirms it can create real-world applications for quantum computers. The company's Quantum Echoes algorithm, detailed in a paper published in Nature, is a demonstration of "the first-ever verifiable quantum advantage running the out-of-order time correlator (OTOC) algorithm."A core belief in quantum computing is that developing computer systems with qubits — which can represent multiple states at once, as opposed to binary ones and zeroes — could lead to greater understanding of the quantum systems surrounding us. Google believes its new algorithm is further proof of that assumption. The Quantum Echoes algorithm is able to illustrate how d [...]