Hi,
Big headline on BBC:
King’s College team wins access to cutting-edge Google quantum chip
I quote from the article:
Quantum computers can in theory solve problems which the most powerful conventional computers cannot.
Google says Willow can solve a theoretical problem in five minutes which would take the world’s current fastest super computers 10 septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – years to complete.
King’s lead for the project Dr Eleanor Crane said its use of Willow would “light a torch” for research to answer questions about the most important natural processes.
“It would be useful if society could understand how plants transform sunlight into energy,
find materials which transport electricity quickly, or how molecules bind to each other,”
said Crane, who will co-lead the research team alongside Dr Alexander Schuckert from ENS Paris.
My Comment:
‘Google’ is a company. As such it is inanimate, and cannot speak.
So no-one we can ask as to how such outrageous bullshit can be justified.
Dr. Eleanor Crane should keep her mouth shut about lighting torches if she is unaware that light IS ENERGY Perhaps she needs to read up the standard definition on photo-synthesis:
“Photosynthesis is a system of biological processes by which photo-pigment bearing autotrophic organism, such as most plants, algae and cyanobacteria, convert light energy – typically from sunlight into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabolism.”
As for finding materials which ‘transport electricity quickly’, does she actually understand what an electric current is? Is she an adherent of the idea that a potential difference between one end of a wire and another, is due to the transportation of a single electron, from one atom to an adjacent atom and so on, until the other end of the wire is reached? Does she understand the affect of valence bands?
As for molecular binding. An understanding of this is old hat. “Molecular binding is an attractive interaction between two molecules that results in a stable association in which the molecules are in close proximity to each other. It is formed when atoms or molecules bind together by sharing of electrons. It often, but not always, involves some chemical bonding,”
Is this a piss-take BBC? Did Chris Vallance actually believe anything that was written here?
There is a clue BBC. The clue is the word ‘theoretical’ which I underlined above.
“Something is theoretical when it is based on ideas, concepts, and abstract principles rather than on practical application, empirical observation, or real-world experimentation. It exists in the realm of theory or speculation.”
joesportugal 