Member-only story
Review: ColdQuanta’s Albert
The recent announcement of Dr. Robert S. Sutor’s move from IBM to ColdQuanta has piqued my interest in the latter company. What does an industry VIP see that would have him pack his bags after 39 years? So, let’s start by taking a look at Albert, because it’s available via the cloud. Albert allows you to “remotely create and manipulate Bose-Einstein
Condensate (BEC).” The fifth state of matter (along with solid, liquid, gas, and plasma), a BEC is formed “when atoms are cooled to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero [and] are forced to begin to clump together and condense into the lowest accessible quantum state, and transition from a gas.”
DISCLAIMER: It’s not a quantum computer.
I normally write about quantum computing, so it’s worth specifying up front that Albert is not a quantum computer. That said, it’s still ultracool, pun intended.
So, what is it?
Albert’s “Ultracold Matter Generator toolkit allows remote users to generate real clouds of ultracold Rubidium with different properties, and then image and analyze those clouds.” Well, I’ve never made ultracold matter before, so why not give it a try?
