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From Wondry, I'm Stephen Johnson, and this is American Innovations.

Google recently announced that it achieved a huge milestone in the world of computing.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, the company announced it built a microchip called

Sikamore, that achieved what is known as quantum supremacy.

Now, the principles of quantum computing line and complicated world of quantum physics.

But a pretty simple way to describe it, as our guest today wrote in the New York Times,

is that Google built a computer that achieved in three minutes,

what it would take 100,000 conventional computers 10,000 years to achieve.

Now, quantum computing is still pretty far off from being in your everyday laptop,

but with this monumental step forward, the reality of quantum computers running all around us is at least one step closer.

So today, we're going to talk with Scott Aronson.

He is the David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin,

and the director of its Quantum Information Center.

He also reviewed Google's paper on achieving quantum supremacy.

We'll talk with Scott about exactly what Google has achieved,

what it means for the future of computing, and why some of Google's competitors are saying not so fast.

That's next.

Thank you.

So, I think that's the best short-hand description of this achievement, and what it means.

Well, I think the best short-hand description is that for the first time we have an unequivocal demonstration

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