5 October 2019 | New Scientist | 15Social science
Donna Lu
HOW much of a person’s career
success is the result of chance?
About half, depending on what
field you’re in.
Roberta Sinatra at the
IT University of Copenhagen,
Denmark, and her colleagues set
out to measure what role luck and
individual ability play in the success
of creative works, including films,
songs, books and scientific research
papers. They used this as a proxy
for career success.
The researchers looked at works
from more than 4 million people
across the publishing, film and
music industries, as well as
15 scientific fields. In each career
there was a slightly different way
of quantifying impact. For example,
for movies and books they looked
at the number of online reviews.
By looking at the random
fluctuations in the timing and
magnitude of successful work,
the team was able to come up with
a crude estimate of luck different
careers typically involve, using a
measure called a randomness index,
R. An entirely luck-based activity
such as roulette would have an R
score of 1, for example (arxiv.org/
abs/1909.07956).
Luck appeared to have a
relatively consistent effect across
all the fields they studied, with
a maximum difference of just
5 per cent. In the music industry,
electronic music artists needed
the most luck (0.546) and classical
musicians the least (0.507),
while in the film industry movie
producers needed the most luck
(0.545). Within science, success in
astronomy involved the most luck
(0.55) while computer science was
associated with the least (0.517).
The aim was to create a model
of the ups and downs of success
within a career, says Sinatra.
The differences in luck between
industries should be taken with
a grain of salt, she says. ❚
Half of your career
success may be
down to luck
QUANTUM computing is now
ready to go – or is it? Google
appears to have reached an
impressive milestone known
as quantum supremacy, where
a quantum computer is able
to perform a calculation that
is practically impossible for
a classical one. But there are
plenty of hurdles left before the
technology hits the big time.
For a start, the processors
need to be more powerful.
Unlike classical computers, which
store data as either a 0 or a 1,
quantum computers use qubits
that save data as a mixture of
these two states.
Google’s quantum computer,
called Sycamore, consisted of only
54 qubits – one of which didn’t
work. For quantum computers to
really come into their own, they
will probably need thousands.
But scaling up the number
won’t be easy. Qubits must be
isolated from vibrations as they
can be easily disturbed, which
can lead to computing errors
down the line. There are manycompeting ideas on how best to
do this. As well as Google, firms
including IBM, Microsoft and Intel
are all looking at how to advance
the technology.
Also on the quantum computer
to-do list is error correction.
Classical computers have
mechanisms to make sure that
when little mistakes happen they
are automatically rectified. The
same will be needed for quantum
computers, especially considering
the delicate nature of qubits.In 2016, a team at Yale
University showed that error
correction is possible with at
least one form of qubit, although
not the type used by Google.
The challenge now is to build
a quantum computer that has
both quantum supremacy and
error-correcting abilities.
The final and perhaps most
important next step is to actually
do something useful.
Google’s quantum computer
tackled what is known as arandom circuit sampling problem.
In such a task, after a series of
calculations, each qubit outputs
a 1 or 0. The aim is to calculate
the probability of each possible
outcome occurring.
Google says Sycamore was
able to find the answer in just a
few minutes – a task it estimates
would take 10,000 years on the
most powerful supercomputer.
Although that is impressive,
there is no practical use for it.
Google’s claim to quantum
supremacy came via a paper
published online and removed
shortly afterwards. The company
has yet to make any public
statement on it.
“We shouldn’t get too carried
away with this,” says Ciarán
Gilligan-Lee at University College
London. This is an important
step for quantum computing,
but there’s still a long way to
go, he says.
The hope is that quantum
computers could eventually help
revolutionise our understanding
of fields such as chemistry and
material science by performing
simulations that are too complex
for classical computers.
“There are certain quantities
that you’d like to know, that you
can’t easily learn from experiment
and can’t calculate with
supercomputers today. This is
where quantum computers can
help,” says Scott Aaronson at
the University of Texas at Austin.
This could eventually lead to
breakthroughs in how we make
fertilisers for food production
or in improving the efficiency
of energy transmission.
There is a risk that quantum
computers could be used to crack
some forms of encryption that
keep the internet secure. However,
people are already working on
alternative forms of encryption
SET that would be harder to break. ❚H^ WENIG/
AP
/SHUT
TE
RSTO
CKIBM is one firm in the
race to build a practical
quantum computer53
The number of (working) qubits
in Google’s quantum computerAnalysis ComputingWhat next for quantum computers? Google appears to have
reached “quantum supremacy”, but there is still a long way to
go before the technology is useful, reports Chelsea Whyte