[magicalhippo]

> Kind of like how simulating anything in detail tends to be a lot slower than the actual thing you're simulating?

From the article[1]:

Our approach avoids the limitations of direct experiments on molecular systems, where only few observables such as spectra and scattering cross sections can be measured. [...] A further advantage comes from the ratio (r) of the ion’s natural timescale (ms) and the measurement speed (ns), leading to an increase in the observable timing resolution of r ∼ 10^6. This improves the achievable resolution of chemical dynamics measurements relative to ultrafast observations.

So seems this would be more like running a computer simulation with a super-short timestep, allowing you to extract more details of a process. It's only related to the wall-clock in that they're using a physical analog system, rather than a computer.

> Not following if there was any breakthrough here or not.

Again from the paper:

Our approach to quantum simulation using an MQB trapped-ion system makes chemical dynamics that are otherwise unmeasurable directly accessible in the laboratory. This is a key demonstration of the utility of small-scale quantum computational devices to offer practical insights into chemical dynamics and resolve intractable problems in chemical physics.

Seems the measurement itself was a showcase for the techniques developed.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.07320