Galaxy Research Director Reviews Google Quantum Paper: Practical Engineering Challenges such as Error Correction Remain Unsolved

On March 31, Alex Thorn—Galaxy’s Research Director—posted on X, stating: “This Google quantum paper is critical because researchers have broken through in circuit optimization. Prior schemes (per Litinski 2023, photonic architecture) needed roughly 9 million physical qubits. This study’s circuit, however, is expected to run Shor’s algorithm with ~500,000 physical qubits under reasonable conditions—and it uses a superconducting architecture aligned with Google’s own processor specs. That’s a ~20x optimization boost for circuit design. The progress comes partly from a more optimal layout and partly from hardware assumptions that better match real-world limits. Still, core engineering hurdles—error correction, decoherence, gate fidelity—haven’t changed. The team developed these circuits but didn’t share specifics. Instead, they proved their existence via “responsible disclosure” using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP): outsiders can verify their conclusions without seeing the actual designs, balancing innovation and key IP protection. Whether future engineering can hit the needed error correction, control decoherence, and get sufficient gate fidelity remains an open, separate question.”