Google's Quantum Computer Just Aced an 'Impossible' Test

Google just took a quantum leap in computer science. Using the company's state-of-the-art quantum computer, called Sycamore, Google has claimed "quantum supremacy" over the most powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible for normal machines. The quantum computer completed the complex computation in 200 seconds. That same calculation would take even the most powerful supercomputers approximately 10,000 years to finish, the team of researchers, led by John Martinis, an experimental physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote in their study published Wednesday (Oct. "It is likely that the classical simulation time, currently estimated at 10,000 years, will be reduced by improved classical hardware and algorithms," Brooks Foxen, a graduate student researcher in Martinis' lab, said in a statement.