Microsoft takes a quantum leap

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Editor's note: Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it has made a major breakthrough in quantum computing. The company’s researchers demonstrated the elusive physics—first theorized in 1937—needed to build topological qubits, the building blocks for developing a scalable quantum computer. (If you are so inclined or have a keen interest in physics, here’s a post by Chetan Nayak, distinguished professor of quantum at Microsoft, explaining the specifics of the breakthrough.) I have written about this before in Oversize, but a quick refresher might be helpful. After all, when asked to explain quantum computing in an interview, Bill Gates confessed, “I know a lot of physics and a lot of math. But the one place where they put up slides and it is hieroglyphics, it’s quantum.” It is okay if you and I struggle with it. Analogous to bits in classical computing, quantum computing is based on the quantum bit, or qubit. Qubits can be in a 1 or 0 quantum state, or they can be in a superposition of the 1 and 0 states (the idea that a particle can exist in …