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Google wants to solve tricky physics problems with quantum computers

Quantum computers could become more useful now researchers at Google have designed an algorithm that can translate complex physical problems into the language of quantum physics

By Alex Wilkins

19 December 2023

A quantum computer

Quantum computers don’t have many practical uses yet

Bartlomiej Wroblewski/Getty Images

Researchers at Google have created an algorithm that can translate complex physical problems into the language of quantum mechanics, which could make quantum computers able to tackle more tasks.

Once they become powerful enough, quantum computers might become useful for specific jobs, such as breaking encryption or modelling quantum mechanics, but it is still largely unknown how useful they will be for many other scientific problems that classical computers…

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