It looks like a golden chandelier and contains the coldest place in the universe. What I am looking at is not just the most powerful computer in the world, but technology pivotal to financial security, Bitcoin, government secrets, the world economy and more. Quantum computing holds the key to which companies and countries win - and lose - the rest of the 21st Century. In front of me suspended a metre in the air, in a Google facility in Santa Barbara California, is Willow. Frankly, it was not what I expected.

Google has announced plans to team up with the UK to invite researchers to come up with uses for the tech giant's state-of-the-art quantum chip Willow. It is one of several firms competing to develop a powerful quantum computer - which is seen as an exciting new frontier in the future of computing. Researchers hope they will be able to crack problems in fields such as chemistry and medicine which are impossible for current computers to solve. Professor Paul Stevenson of the University of Surrey - who had no involvement with the agreement - told the BBC it was great news for UK researchers. The collaboration between Google and the UK's national lab for quantum computing means more researchers will get access to the technology.

Researchers at Google Quantum AI have used their Willow quantum computer to help interpret data from Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a mainstay of chemistry and biology research. The work puts quantum computers on the precipice of being able to usefully augment commonplace molecular technologies. The most rigorously proven uses for quantum computers are in breaking cryptography, but today's devices are too small and error-prone to run decryption algorithms. Another place where they could make strides, though, is in accelerating procedures used to discover new drugs and materials. Such procedures are inherently quantum in nature, so they make a good match for the capabilities of quantum computers.

It's one of the most difficult decisions a new parent can make – what shall we call our baby? Now, a huge analysis has revealed that names associated with intelligence are dying out, while those linked to beauty, elegance or strength are on the up. The study, carried out by The Economist, scrutinised the names of nearly 400 million infants born in Britain and the US over the last 143 years. Researchers used a large language model – the type of AI that powers the likes of ChatGPT – for their analysis. They fed it with an enormous amount of text taken from the internet and asked it to identify the five most common terms linked with each name.

Google's quantum computing breakthrough on Monday has left the physicist who heads the project a believer in'the idea that we live in a multiverse.' 'Willow,' the tech giant's new quantum chip, succeeded in solving a computational problem so complex it would have taken today's best super-computers an estimated 10 septillion years to solve it -- vastly more than the age of our entire universe. But Google said its new quantum computer solved the puzzle'in under five minutes.' Calling Willow's performance'astonishing,' the leader and founder of Google Quantum AI team, physicist Hartmut Neven, said its high-speed result'lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes.' Neven credited Oxford University physicist David Deutsch for proposing the theory that the successful development of quantum computing would, in effect, affirm the'many worlds interpretation' of quantum mechanics and the existence of a multiverse. Starting in the 1970s, Deutsch, in fact, had walked backwards into becoming a pioneer in the field of quantum computing, less out of interest in the technology itself, than his desire to test the multiverse theory.

Google has taken a major step towards creating a quantum computer, after unveiling a'mind-boggling' quantum chip - its most powerful yet. Measuring 1.5-inches (4cm) – a little larger than an After Eight mint – the chip takes five minutes to complete tasks that would take conventional computers 10 septillion years. Crucially, Google's chip has demonstrated the ability to reduce computational errors exponentially as it scales up – a feat that has eluded researchers for nearly 30 years. Ultimately, the aim is to build a'commercial' quantum computer – one that could be purchased by members of the public and used in labs, offices and even homes. As this is still a decade or two away at least, for now, firms like Google and IBM are building'experimental' quantum computers that are still in the research and development phase. In the near future, scientists expect quantum computers will replace the'classical' computers at our desks and revolutionise our lives.

Google has unveiled a new quantum computer and is once more claiming to have pulled ahead in the race to show that these exotic machines can beat even the world's best conventional supercomputers – so does that mean useful quantum computers are finally here? Researchers at the tech giant were the first in the world to demonstrate this feat, known as quantum supremacy, with the announcement of the Sycamore quantum computing chip in 2019. But since then, supercomputers have caught up, leaving Sycamore behind. Now, Google has produced a new quantum chip, called Willow, which Julian Kelly at Google Quantum AI says is the firm's best yet. "You can think of this as having all the advantages of Sycamore, but if you were to look under the hood, we changed the geometry… we reimagined the processor," he says.

Before the release of the Willow sequel series for Disney, showrunner Jon Kasdan had stated that the show would take some time in putting Val Kilmer's character of Madmartigan from the original film on screen. The show has taken steps to make sure that the character's presence is felt throughout the series, though, thanks to archive footage from the 1988 film, and also through the recent appearance of Christian Slater as Allagash, a close friend of the hero who crosses paths with the show's young heroes. This past week's episode, "Prisoners of Skellin," manages to bring back Kilmer's character in a different way. As Allagash and the teens look for a magical artifact inside the tomb of Wiggledoom, Kit (Ruby Cruz) hears her father Madmartigan's voice calling to her from somewhere inside the tomb. He doesn't make a physical appearance, as he's trapped in either Skellin (or another dimension that Skellin leads to), but it's looking as though getting him out of there will serve as part of the drive for the season's final two episodes.

It was a good week to grab the latest Amazon Echo devices as many of them were discounted to near-record lows. The sale that started over the weekend continued and saw prices slashed on the latest Echo, Echo Show 5 and Echo Dot, among others. Apple's MacBook Pro M1 fell to its lowest price yet thanks to coupons that accompanied sale prices, and the Apple Watch SE remains on sale for $259. And through Sunday, Best Buy has a limited-time sale on a bunch of gear, including the latest Samsung smartphones, Surface tablets and OLED TVs. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

In the visual novel Syntherapy, everyone has a complex: The president of the university, the Clippy-like OS assistant and especially the depressed AI who you've been sent to help. Not to mention the protagonist. Set about 20 years in the future, the game's narrative is told from the vantage point of Melissa Park, a psychotherapist. Out of the blue comes a nervous request from a grad student: the AI that her team built to conduct therapy is now, itself, in need of counseling. The AI, named Willow, feels overwhelmed.