[adrianhoward]

Out of interest, when the chemically accurate simulations are made are there any surprises? Or do the estimations that are normally used good enough for most purposes?

Well - it's more that there are entire classes of things that we can't simulate in any reasonable amount of time that (in theory) QCs should be very good at.

Protein folding for example. Finding the lowest energy state that protein's fold into is really, really hard and slow. QCs can theoretically do it very, very quickly. This opens up whole areas of experimentation and validation that are closed to us at the moment because the feedback cycle on solutions is so darn slow and/or inaccurate.

Protein folding errors are at the heart of diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinsons. QCs capable of simulating the chemistry involved would be a huge help in attacking those problems.