--- title: Quantum Simulation & Nature - Computerphile | daily.dev description: Two researchers explain how quantum computers can simulate quantum phenomena in nature, such as photosynthesis and lithium-ion battery chemistry, tasks that... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-simulation-nature---computerphile-l1mkksg7e twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Quantum Simulation & Nature - Computerphile | daily.dev og:description: Two researchers explain how quantum computers can simulate quantum phenomena in nature, such as photosynthesis and lithium-ion battery chemistry, tasks that... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-simulation-nature---computerphile-l1mkksg7e og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/l1mKksG7e.png og:image:alt: Quantum Simulation & Nature - Computerphile og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Quantum Simulation & Nature - Computerphile **[Computerphile](https://daily.dev/sources/computerphile)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Two researchers explain how quantum computers can simulate quantum phenomena in nature, such as photosynthesis and lithium-ion battery chemistry, tasks that scale exponentially and overwhelm classical computers. They walk through qubit superposition using the Bloch sphere, how entangling gates couple qubits to model electrons hopping across atoms in a battery material, and why this lets a quantum computer evaluate many states in parallel. They close by discussing current hardware (superconducting, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom platforms with hundreds of qubits) and speculate that meaningful real-world quantum simulation and decryption results could arrive within a couple of years, contingent on scaling to around 100,000 controlled qubits. The video ends with a sponsored segment for a trading firm's internship program. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why are quantum computers considered better suited than classical computers for simulating battery chemistry? Modeling electron positions across atoms in a battery material requires tracking a state space that grows exponentially, as two to the number of atoms, which becomes computationally infeasible for classical computers beyond roughly 20 atoms. Quantum computers represent each atom's electron state as a qubit in superposition and use entangling gates to evaluate all possible electron configurations in parallel rather than one at a time. _Anyone weighing quantum versus classical approaches to materials simulation can follow developments like this on daily.dev._ ### How many qubits do current quantum computers have compared to what is needed for practical quantum simulation? Current quantum computers, including superconducting platforms like Willow and cold-atom or trapped-ion systems, have on the order of hundreds of qubits. Practical applications such as useful quantum simulation or decryption experiments are estimated to require around 100,000 qubits, and researchers have already demonstrated trapping that many atoms, though controlling all of them at once remains the next challenge. _Developers tracking real-world quantum computing progress can follow qubit scaling milestones on daily.dev._ ### How does an entangling gate model an electron hopping between atoms in a quantum simulation? An entangling gate applies a conditional operation, such as: if one qubit is in state one, flip a paired qubit's state, which lets a superposition representing an electron's position on one atom transfer probabilistically to a neighboring atom. This lets the simulation apply the same operation to every possible electron configuration simultaneously rather than computing each configuration separately, which is what gives quantum computers their speed advantage for this type of problem. _Those exploring qubit entanglement mechanics for simulation work can keep up with explainers like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Quantum Simulation Explained: Applications, Methods and Challenges](https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-simulation-explained-applications-methods-and-challenges-ln6sn9vqm) · The Quantum Insider · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Quantum batteries could quadruple qubit capacity while reducing energy infrastructure requirements](https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-batteries-could-quadruple-qubit-capacity-while-reducing-energy-infrastructure-requirements-mz4q6izg4) · Phys.org · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Quantum Twins: Silicon's Leap in Analog Simulation](https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-twins-silicon-s-leap-in-analog-simulation-jgfxfdjtl) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#quantum-computing](https://daily.dev/tags/quantum-computing), [#algorithms](https://daily.dev/tags/algorithms) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-simulation-nature---computerphile-l1mkksg7e) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Quantum Simulation & Nature - 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