Alie Ward

Samuel Ball wants to know, has the impossible issue of tunneling been solved yet?

Or are there any good theories out there?

What is tunneling?

I didn't know what tunneling was until right now.

I thought it was maybe something that college kids did at parties.

This next question about something that we keep in our pants pocket was asked by patrons Julie Bearer, Will Matlack, Jess, CJ Stuart Hodges, Mike Roch, Courtney Markham, Ewan Munro, Michael Preston, who wanted to know why we should give a rat's left ear about the topic, Philip Wehry, and...

Spencer wants to know, no matter how much I research, I don't understand quantum computing.

Is there an easy way to understand it?

Also, will quantum computers replace all computers eventually, like our phones, or just supercomputers?

So it's using the superposition of, say, positive, negative here, there, as kind of a replacement for the binary 10010.

Yeah.

And so it can go much faster because it's at an elemental level?

Also, if you've been seeing the words quantum supremacy lately,

Thank Google.

So in late 2019, just a few weeks ago, Google announced that their quantum computer, which looks to be about the size of a small chandelier that dangles in a cryo chamber colder than outer space, is named Sycamore.

Well, the processor, a small chip, is Sycamore, but it needs all those kind of sparkly golden wires to function.

Anyway, a team out of University of California, Santa Barbara's labs just published a paper revealing that Sycamore had solved a math problem

In 200 seconds.

So way to go, Sycamore.

Who cares?