Last week a team of scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China accomplished what many had speculated was impossible: Quantum Supremacy. Quantum Supremacy sounds intimidating, and it is, yet it’s easily understood at a very high level. Simply put, Quantum Supremacy is a computer's ability to solve at least one problem from a set that is currently either unsolvable or takes a massive amount of time to solve given current computing methods. Until very recently, such an outcome was deemed completely infeasible. This particular turn in computing is of massive importance. Scott Aaronson, Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas, explains in his brilliant blog about Quantum Computing (QC):
It’s like, have a little respect for the immensity of what we’re talking about here, and for the terrifying engineering that’s needed to make it reality. Before quantum supremacy, by definition, the QC skeptics can all laugh to each other that, for all the billions of dollars spent over 20+ years, still no quantum computer has even once been used to solve any problem faster than your laptop could solve it, or at least not in any way that depended on its being a quantum computer. In a post-quantum-supremacy world, that’s no longer the case. A superposition involving 2^50 or 2^60 complex numbers has been computationally harnessed, using time and space resources that are minuscule compared to 2^50 or 2^60. I keep bringing up the Wright Flyer only because the chasm between what we’re talking about, and the dismissiveness I’m seeing in some corners of the Internet, is kind of breathtaking to me. It’s like, if you believed that useful air travel was fundamentally impossible, then seeing a dinky wooden propeller plane keep itself aloft wouldn’t refute your belief… but it sure as hell shouldn’t reassure you either.
Essentially, the advent of Quantum Supremacy isn't the flight you'll take home to see your family at Christmas, it's the first flight that many people believed couldn't happen. Like the Wright Flyer, the Quantum Supremacy achieved in China as a specific innovation does not have a massive effect on your life, but it most likely will drastically change the world with the variations that follow as a result of it. How did the scientists of Google, IBM, the University of Science and Technology of China, and others know about Quantum Supremacy? That stems from the work of a German physicist in the early 1900s.
Max Planck created the field of Quantum Theory (these days its referred to as Quantum Mechanics). He created it by accident. Planck was trying to solve a much smaller problem. He was trying to theorize a more efficient lightbulb for an electric company in Berlin. While tackling this relatively humble undertaking, he ran into the "The Ultraviolet Catastrophe." The Ultraviolet Catastrophe theorizes an ideal physical body called a "black body" which absorbs all radiated energy and releases that energy with 100% efficiency. Put simply, a black body is a "perfect emitter" of energy that would emit all radiation it absorbed. If achieved, the electric companies of Berlin would save massive amount of energy and money. The problem was that as scientists observed the world, they couldn't find any black bodies. The theory did not match reality.
Planck kept trying to solve the black body problem with little success. Every time he formed a solution, the solution did not reflect reality. Planck decided to take some scientific liberties to solve the problem and took the kind of step that surges technology forward. He created a solution that defied what was believed to be true about the atomic world at the time. Planck published an equation that could accurately determine the power output of an object after gauging its temperature and wavelength that had no basis in classical physics. Planck did not consider his equation a shocking overturning of scientific understanding. James Lees, in the forward for a republished Quantum Theory by Max Planck and Niels Bohr, states that:
Despite having become the 'father of quantum physics' through his Postulate, Planck remained unsatisfied with it. To him the quantization of energy was merely a means to an end - a mathematical trick that neatly solved the problem, but provided little insight into the physics behind it. (Emphasis mine)
The man who forever changed how science would understand the atomic world had no idea he had done it. He was simply solving a short term problem plaguing his immediate goal of making a marginally better lightbulb. Planck's "mathematical trick" would pave the road for a scientific hobbyist by the name of Albert Einstein to make his mark on the world, the eventual achievement of Quantum Supremacy by a team of scientists from China, and time will tell what else.
Planck's solution demonstrates how many of the greatest innovations take place. Not through grand dreams of surging science forward for the sake of it - instead, innovation comes about in a series of incremental steps, many times audacious steps that defy how we observe reality, but small steps none-the-less. Innovation cannot proceed without useful solutions to short-term problems.