Two Australian scientists, physicist Dr Simon Devitt, senior research scientist at the Centre for Emergent Matter Sciences in Tokyo, and Dr Austin Fowler, a quantum hardware engineer at Google in Santa Barbara, California, helped create a game called meQuanics, a quantum computing challenge designed to help develop the next generation of computers.
“Gamification has become a very significant and credible way to help out scientific research,” Devitt said. “It’s a difficult thing to do well, but if you hit the right formula, the power of a very large, and active, group of people can help tremendously.”
meQuanics was inspired by one of the first crowdsourcing science games, FoldIt, developed by the University of Washington’s Centre for Game Science, where players twist proteins into their most stable shape, helping scientists better understand how they are created. The proteins are represented in a 3D puzzle.
Read the full article by Cynthia Karena on theage.com.au
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/games/citizen-science-gamers-help-solve-quantum-questions-20160502-gokkoz
