this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five

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Why is the recent news around the LK-99 room-temperature superconductor such a big deal? What material impact would those findings have on electronics and modern technology?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For example, you can resolve a lot of blockers of scaling quantum computers based on superconductive qubits.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My 5 year old appreciates this very clear answer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Well obviously

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Quantum computing needs to be cold to avoid thermal noise from destroying coherence. A room temperature superconductor probably doesn't enable room temperature quantum computing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But it might help in general right? Less resistance means less thermal noise?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At the temps needed, regular copper is superconducting.

It could be helpful in some of the intermediary stages to reduce heat production, but it's not going to be a major linchpin for quantum computing. They'll still need cryostats and liquid helium cooling.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think that if you can scale your physical qubits easily you will be able to use all the power of error correction codes. Even a thousand of physical qubits per one logical qubit should be feasible if you do not need to support superconductivity by helium coolers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Error correction relies on the majority of values to remain unchanged. I don't think that assumption holds for qubits at room temperature. I'll admit that I'm not well read enough to be certain.

Room temperature superconductors would be great for a lot of applications, but I don't think they do that much to enable quantum computing.