Are quantum computers already super-powerful?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Google claim their latest quantum computer chip is able to process something in five minutes it would take a normal computer 10 septillion years to figure out.
As this is a massive amount longer than the entire history of the known universe, that seems to suggest the chip is extremely powerful.
But when you understand what’s going on, the claim doesn’t seem quite so impressive. Dr Peter Leek, a quantum computer scientist from Oxford University, explains the key context.
Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Andrew Garratt Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of Your Dead to Me, where the best names in comedy and history |
| 0:05.5 | join me to learn about and laugh at the past. You are a traitor. And in the new series, we'll meet |
| 0:11.2 | Aristotle. I think he might have been a time traveller. Someone who's like almost a glitch. |
| 0:15.3 | We'll dive into the causes of the British Civil Wars in the 1600s. In England at this period, |
| 0:19.8 | there's people can't get on the housing ladder. |
| 0:21.5 | This sounds familiar. |
| 0:23.2 | And we'll discover the arts and crafts movement. |
| 0:25.3 | I love the clothes. |
| 0:26.3 | I love the vibe. |
| 0:27.1 | Yes, we're a comedy show that takes history seriously and then laughs at it. |
| 0:30.5 | You're dead to me. |
| 0:31.3 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.1 | Hello, and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast. With a program that looks at the numbers in the news and the world around us, |
| 0:40.2 | and I'm Charlotte McDonald. |
| 0:45.4 | Today we're looking at a number that a little bit like Schrodinger's cat |
| 0:49.1 | is either a massive number or not a massive number, |
| 0:53.1 | depending on whether the story holds together. |
| 0:55.8 | It was sent in by listener David Lawrence, who asked us to look into a figure he'd seen in the press coverage of a new quantum computer chip being developed by Google. |
| 1:04.7 | Here's the claim. |
| 1:06.1 | Chip takes minutes to complete tasks that would otherwise take 10 septillion years. |
| 1:11.4 | That's 10 with 24 zeros after it, which, as the article in the Guardian newspaper explains, |
| 1:17.6 | is a length of time that far exceeds the age of our known universe. So it's definitely a big number. |
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