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They didn't say 2.5 days on a laptop. They probably mean on a bunch of datacenters together. That is expensive.

Google implied their supremacy over all of the world computers combined together.

They are talking about 2.5 days on the world's most powerful super computer, which Google had previously claimed would take 10,000 years to complete the task.

These calculations of 2.5 day and 1000 years, they're calculations based on specific parameters, right? Could they just prove it on a smaller version of the problem instead? Can they do a version of the problem which takes maybe 1m on with IBMs algorithm and 1 year with Google's?

Aaronson's blog goes into this. The problem is exponentially difficult to simulate in the number of qibits. Each quibdit doubles the storage required. 25 quibits can be done on a laptop. 50 requires a supercomputer. 53 is just small enough to fit on the biggest supercomputer. 55 doesn't fit.

There's also an alternative algorithm that requires less space, but it takes longer.

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