QUANTUM COMPUTERS, COMING SOONER THAN EXPECTED.

Though the word "quantum" seems to scare you away, it still sounds like a wacky concept grounded in science fiction, not reality. Well, the recent break through may put the computer from lab to the offices sooner than we expected. Here is one of the outstanding features that makes the quantum computer a welcome idea;

"Unsolvable" problems

Regular computers that we use every day use "bits" that store information as a 1 or a 0 — and a string of ones and zeroes represents a specific number or letter.

On the flip side, quantum computers take advantage of a really weird phenomenon in physics where tiny particles can exist in multiple places at once. Instead of using bits that only have two "settings," they use something called quantum bits, or "qubits," which have an extra setting — they can exist as a 1, or a 0, or both at the same time.

So a regular computer made of two bits can encode information in only one of four possible combinations: 00, 01, 10, 11. A quantum computer can hold all four of those combinations at once. This lets them handle exponentially more information than regular computers.

Another way to think about the difference between regular and quantum computers is to think about a version of the famous "traveling salesman" problem in mathematics. In the problem, you are a salesman planning a road trip and you want to figure out which route through 10 different cities will be the cheapest (gas-wise) and fastest.

A regular computer would have to calculate the length of all those routes separately and then compare the results to find the winner. A quantum computer could figure out the length of all the routes at the same time because qubits can process lots of information all at once — getting to the answer much faster.