Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jamez1 3502 days ago
Forgive my ignorance:

What actually makes it hard to predict a chemical reaction? Can't we empirically deduce them from quantum mechanics?

1 comments

Theoretically, yes, if we knew all of the physics laws accurately enough. However, there are a lot of behaviors that are difficult to predict in the aggregate. That's one of the reasons we end up with different specializations: quantum mechanics, atomic physics, molecular chemistry, organic chemistry, etc.

Another example would be protein folding. Even within the same "level" of chemistry, predicting the three-dimensional structure of a protein molecule based purely on the chemistry we understand and the protein sequence is a hard problem. We're getting better at it, but it's still hard.