Oz boffins cook quantum computing out of mothballs A Sydney University researcher has burned naphthalene to create a material that can hold quantum qubit information at room temperatures. While the world has both quantum storage and quantum gates, albeit at small scales, even performing a simple Boolean AND operation on qubits is best undertaken as close as you can get to 0 …
sup is the superscript tag, while sub is the subscript tag.
In chemistry, these have very different meaning. Subscript following an element symbol indicates the number of atoms of a given element within a molecule. A numerical superscript preceeding an element symbol indicates a specific isotope of an element[*]. A numerical superscript following an entire chemical formula (or element symbol), usually preceded or followed by a plus or minus sign, indicates the overall charge of the species (or a localized functional group).
Thus, C<sub>10</sub>H<sub>8</sub> [***] is a molecule containing ten carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms[**], while C<sub>10</sub>H<sup>8</sup> is a hypothetical[****] molecular ion consisting of ten carbon atoms, one hydrogen atom, and missing eight electrons.
[*] E.g. <sup>14</sup>C is a common radioactive isotope of a carbon atom, <sup>12</sup>C is the most commonly occurring isotope, <sup>13</sup>C is a minor stable isotope; the element symbol without the left superscript refers to the naturally occurring isotopic mixture.
[**] With naphthalene being one of the possible isomers; azulene is another common molecule with this molecular formula; there is a large number of other, less common isomers as well.
[***] I apologize on el Reg's behalf for the sub- and super-scripts not being rendered properly: it looks like these tags is one of the little perks withdrawn from the committed life-long ACs.
[****] I say hypothetical because multiply-charged molecular ions typically fragment into smaller ions; a small ion of a charge +8 will likely fragment so fast that it is better discussed as a resonance rather than a chemical species.
Practical computing has always been about chemistry.
Babbage engine and pneumatic computers aside, there is very little actual computing you can do without some very advanced chemistry happening in the background. Ultimately, chemistry also puts a stop to any computing device.
P.S. Yes, I am a chemist. I wonder why did you ask?
" When did Computing become Chemistry?"
It's difficult to be precise, but I would say it has been chemistry since at least 1958 with the introduction of the IC which takes one heck of a lot of chemistry to create. You could argue further back since transistors are not much more than chemistry in a package and even thermionic valves use a lot of chemistry (such as gettering and the rare-earth oxide coated cathodes).
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Heh, good one.
The slight snag here is that the readout requires low resistance so noise is going to be a problem if conventional coils are used.
Incidentally this is also why superconductors are used in D-Wave's QPU as the problem is twofold: the Josephon junctions have to be kept at millikelvins and the readout wires (from the junctions to other parts) also have to be very cold to superconduct.
Its actually a bit like an upside-down fridge with the most fragile part near the bottom of the cryostat.
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