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Physicists connect the dots on quantum computing

Researchers at Harvard and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics make progress on scalable designs for potentially super powerful computers that harness the weird laws of quantum mechanics.

http://goo.gl/9F23K

Physicists have long sought to use the bizarre workings of quantum mechanics to make mind-boggling leaps in computing power. And they appear to actually be making progress.

Researchers from Harvard University and the Weizmann Institude of Science in Israel today published a paper describing a technique for two quantum bits, or qubits, to operate in a predictable and coordinated way, a small step toward a working quantum computer.

In a separate effort, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics today claimed to have made a breakthrough by making a prototype of a quantum communications network. Both groups say their experiments were designed with eventually building commercial systems in mind.

Efforts like these are still fundamental research so it's impossible to say when a quantum computer for super powerful cryptography, for example, will be functioning. But the work in quantum computing, which is based on discoveries in physics from the 1920s, offers one possible route to ensure a trajectory of ever-more-powerful computers in the future.
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