Google has unveiled a recent chip which it claims takes five minutes to solve a issue that would currently receive the globe’s fastest super computers ten septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years – to complete.

The chip is the latest advancement in a field known as quantum computing – which is attempting to use the principles of particle physics to make a recent type of mind-bogglingly powerful computer.

Google says its recent quantum chip, dubbed “Willow”, incorporates key “breakthroughs” and “paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer.”

However experts declare Willow is, for now, a largely experimental device, meaning a quantum computer powerful enough to solve a wide range of real-globe problems is still years – and billions of dollars – away.

Quantum computers work in a fundamentally different way to the computer in your phone or laptop.

They harness quantum mechanics – the strange behaviour of ultra-tiny particles – to crack problems far faster than traditional computers.

It’s hoped quantum computers might eventually be able to use that ability to vastly speed up complicated processes, such as creating recent medicines.

There are also fears it could be used for ill – for example to shatter some types of encryption used to protect sensitive data.

In February Apple announced that the encryption that protects iMessage chats is being made “quantum proof” to stop them being read by powerful upcoming quantum computers.

Hartmut Neven leads Google’s Quantum AI lab that created Willow and describes himself as the assignment’s “chief optimist.”

He told the BBC that Willow would be used in some practical applications – but declined, for now, to provide more specific.

But a chip able to perform commercial applications would not appear before the complete of the decade, he said.

Initially these applications would be the simulation of systems where quantum effects are significant

“For example, relevant when it comes to the design of nuclear fusion reactors to comprehend the functioning of drugs and pharmaceutical advancement, it would be relevant for developing better car batteries and another long list of such tasks”.

Mr Neven told the BBC Willow’s act meant it was the “best quantum processor built to date”.

But Professor Alan Woodward, a computing specialist at Surrey University, says quantum computers will be better at a range of tasks than current “classical” computers, but they will not replace them.

He warns against overstating the importance of Willow’s achievement in a single test.

“One has to be careful not to contrast apples and oranges” he told the BBC.

Google had chosen a issue to use as a standard of act that was, “tailor-made for a quantum computer” and this didn’t demonstrate “a universal speeding up when compared to classical computers”.

Nonetheless, he said Willow represented significant advancement, in particular in what’s known as error correction.

In very straightforward terms the more useful a quantum computer is, the more qubits it has.

However a major issue with the technology is that it is prone to errors – a tendency that has previously increased the more qubits a chip has.

But Google researchers declare they have reversed this and managed to engineer and program the recent chip so the error rate fell across the whole structure as the number of qubits increased.

It was a major “breakthrough” that cracked a key test that the field had pursued “for almost 30 years”, Mr Neven believes.

He told the BBC it was comparable to “if you had an airplane with just one engine – that will work, but two engines are safer, four engines is yet safer”.

Errors are a significant obstacle in creating more powerful quantum computers and the advancement was “encouraging for everyone striving to construct a practical quantum computer” Prof Woodward said.

But Google itself notes that to develop practically useful quantum computers the error rate will still require to leave much lower than that displayed by Willow.

Willow was made in Google’s recent, purpose-built manufacturing plant in California.

Countries around the globe are investing in quantum computing.

The UK recently launched the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC).

Its director, Michael Cuthbert, told the BBC he was wary of language that fuelled the “hype pattern” and thought Willow was more a “milestone rather than a breakthrough”.

Nevertheless, it was “clearly a highly impressive piece of work”.

Eventually quantum computers would assist with a range of tasks including “logistics problems such as cargo freight distribution on aircraft or routing of telecoms signals or stored vigor throughout the national grid”, he said.

And there were already 50 quantum businesses in the UK, attracting £800m in capital and employing 1300 people.

On Friday, researchers from Oxford University and Osaka University in Japan published a document showcasing the very low error rate in a trapped-ion qubit.

Theirs is a different way to making a quantum computer that’s capable of working at room temperature – whereas Google’s chip has to be stored at ultra low temperatures to be effective.

Scientific findings from Google’s advancement of Willow have been published in the journal Nature