Google clears major hurdle in quantum computing race

In an article published on its website, Financial Times features that a significant breakthrough in the race to develop practical quantum computers has been achieved, marking a pivotal moment in the field. 

According to experts in the field, one of the biggest remaining technical challenges in the development of practical quantum computers has been overcome, potentially paving the way for full-scale systems by the end of this decade.

This latest development adds to the growing optimism surrounding the long-standing quest for quantum computers, following Google's announcement that it had reached a critical milestone in addressing the inherent instability of quantum systems.

The findings, which first circulated informally in August, were officially published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Alongside the breakthrough, Google revealed details of a new, more powerful quantum chip designed to carry out the demonstration, which the company believes will enable it to scale up its technology toward practical use.

Experts in the field have drawn comparisons between Google’s achievement and the first successful man-made nuclear chain reaction in 1942—a breakthrough that, like this one, had been long anticipated but required years of gradual advancements in technology to become a reality.

“This was theoretically proposed back in the 90s,” said William Oliver, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commenting on Google’s quantum demonstration. “We’ve been waiting for this result for many years.”

“It often takes decades for engineering to catch up with the theory, and that’s what we’re seeing here,” added Scott Aaronson, a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Since the concept of quantum computers was first introduced, one of the greatest challenges has been creating systems stable enough for large-scale computing operations. 

Quantum computers rely on quantum phenomena such as superposition, where particles can exist in multiple states at once, and entanglement, where particles in a quantum state influence each other. However, quantum bits, or qubits, only maintain their quantum states for incredibly brief moments, meaning any information they store is rapidly lost.

As more qubits are involved in a calculation and more operations are performed, the "noise" in the system increases, as errors accumulate. To address this, scientists have long hoped to implement error correction—encoding the same information across multiple qubits so that even if some qubits "decohere," the overall system retains enough data to perform a coherent computation.

However, for error correction to succeed, the individual qubits must be of sufficient quality to ensure that the combined output remains useful, rather than degenerating into noise.

by Naila Huseynova