How Google’s Algorithms Are Solving Chemistry’s Trickiest Calculations

Google knows a affair or two about complex computing performed across very big data point sets . Which is why chemists are borrowing approximation from the search company to help them predict how substances react with each other .

PageRank is the algorithm that Google uses to find the relevancy of links . Now , scientists from Washington State University haveborrowed ideas from the codeto realize how molecules interact with each other . In fact , they ’ve developed their own software , moleculaRnetworks , inspired by PageRank , which measures how many hydrogen bonds a water mote has , and how many its neighbors have , too .

Why ’s the utilitarian ? Well , it can be used to crop out how water react when another substance — say , table salt — is dissolve in it , for understand the most potential arrangement and predilection . The consequence is a well theoretic understanding of reaction and the processes that drive them . While salt in water is older and evenhandedly aboveboard to pose , the researchers claim that the PageRank algorithm is powerful enough to do much , much more . [ Journal of Computational ChemistryviaExtreme Tech ]