U.S., China and Japan Scientists Achieve Milestone Towards Quantum Computers

Here's some more science news, Kids. An international research effort involving UC Santa Barbara professors Andrew Cleland and John Martinis, along with scientists from Zhejiang University in China and NEC Corporation in Japan, has resulted in a crucial breakthrough towards the construction of a quantum computer.

Quantum computers are the holy grail of computing technology. A mature one can theoretically perform more calculations per second than there are atoms in the universe, as well as outstripping human intelligence by many, many orders of magnitude.

My understanding of quantum physics is quite limited to explain this article, but what they seem to have done is create a logic circuit, an ability to produce a 1 or 0, which is the fundamental requisite for all computing functions. However, since we're dealing in quantum physics, there exists a little twist. The teams had set up two areas and manipulated them in such a way that light photons would all congregate in one or the other. However, until they actually looked, the same photons all seemed to be in both areas simultaneously.