GOOGLE AND NASA MAKING THE QUANTUM COMPUTER

What's different about a quantum computer?

The key to quantum computers lies in qubits. The normal computers that we use every day use "bits" that store information as a 1 or a 0. A qubit, on the other hand, takes advantage of a really weird phenomenon in physics where tiny particles can exist in multiple places at once. That means qubits technically exist as both a 1 and a 0, so they can store exponentially more information than regular bits.

For example, a computer with two bits can encode information in only one of four possible combinations: 00, 01, 10, or 11. A qubit can hold all four of those combinations at once.

Scientists have just figured out a solution to one of the biggest problems standing in the way of the development of quantum computers.The latest advancement, from researchers at Google and the University of California, Santa Barbara, is a way to make quantum computers more stable and better able to find and fix errors. The new research was published on March 4 in the journal Nature.

Some calculations take years for present-day computers to complete. A quantum computer could do that same calculation in a few seconds, and this breakthrough has some scientists saying that we're now half way to making quantum computers a reality.

 WHAT IS QUANTUM COMPUTING?

Quantum computing is based on quantum bits or qubits. Unlike traditional computers, in which bits must have a value of either zero or one, a qubit can represent a zero, a one, or both values simultaneously. Representing information in qubits allows the information to be processed in ways that have no equivalent in classical computing, taking advantage of phenomena such as quantum tunneling and quantum entanglement. As such, quantum computers may theoretically be able to solve certain problems in a few days that would take millions of years on a classical computer.