[Xcelerate]

Let's say you want to simulate three carbon atoms with near perfect accuracy (not considering constituent quarks, radiative effects, or relativistic effects). We'll remove the BO approximation though. So that's 2^(3 atoms * 3 coordinates * 3*12 particles) = 2^324. That's more than the number of particles in the universe. A classical computer that can handle that is simply not gonna happen. And that's just three atoms.

[ScottBurson]

Are you sure it shouldn't be 2^(3 + 3 + 3*12) = 2^42 ? That would still be a pretty big number, but not yet astronomical.

[ballstothewalls]

I understand that is massive, but aren't computers today doing things that seemed utterly impossible forty years ago?