Science

6907 readers

55 users here now

General discussions about "science" itself

Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:

https://lemmy.ml/c/science

https://beehaw.org/c/science

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

Sal@mander.xyz

fossilesque@mander.xyz

Scientists may have found the holy grail of quantum computing (www.sciencedaily.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Gsus4@mander.xyz to c/science@mander.xyz

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Scientists may have spotted a long-sought triplet superconductor — a material that can transmit both electricity and electron spin with zero resistance. That ability could dramatically stabilize quantum computers while slashing their energy use. Early experiments suggest the alloy NbRe behaves unlike any conventional superconductor. If verified, it could become a cornerstone of next-generation quantum and spintronic technology.

essentially a conductor for "spin currents"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mech@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So...does this mean it will soon be able to multiply two-digit numbers?

[–] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It would be a terrible machine for that. Never use a quantum computer to multiply numbers.

[–] mech@feddit.org 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't that kind of a thing it needs to do to find the factorials of large numbers to break traditional encryption?

[–] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Not really. It needs to apply unitary operators to elements in Hilbert space, which is essentially multiplying matrices onto vectors.

Which you could do by multiplying the involved numbers one by one, as most classical methods would, but then you're missing the point of using a quantum computer.