Quantum Computing Quantum Computing
Quantum Computing 
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The usual rules of physics break down at the subatomic level. According to quantum mechanics, electrons and photons can act like both particles and waves, located in more than one place at a given moment — among other goofy behaviors.
For instance, check out the video from Google below to learn why, when you plunge into the quantum realm, pizza might also be a bagel. (Go ahead, we’ll wait.)
Applying quantum principles to computers gets you a different kind of computing.
Traditionally, bits of memory are either set to 0 or 1, on or off. But a quantum bit (or qubit) can be in a state of 0 and 1 at the same time.
Jordan Brandt, technology futurist at Autodesk (Photo courtesy of Autodesk)
That means so called quantum computers, like the D-Wave Two recently acquired by Google and NASA, can process all combinations of bits at once, enabling fast and powerful computation. (For our purposes here, we’re sidestepping the controversy over whether or not the machine is a genuine quantum computer.)
“Computer scientists have given up on the brute force approach because there are not enough computers in the world,” said Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave Systems, in an earlier interview. “With this tool computer scientists can look at really solving for answers and doing it in real time. In some cases you couldn’t do it any other way.”
That opens up new possibilities for exploring complex scenarios with lots of variables and less than perfect data, like simulating NASA missions to Mars or Google’s efforts in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“We can have more open-ended questions,” said Jordan Brandt, technology futurist at Autodesk. “We can suspend disbelief longer in asking questions, because it can hold multiple states simultaneously.”
http://recode.net/2014/01/01/robots-regenerative-medicine-and-more-futurists-...
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An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland.REUTERS
The National Security Agency is reportedly racing to build a computer that will be able to break almost every kind of encryption used to protect medical, banking, business and government records around the world.
According to documents provided by NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden, a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets” includes a project to build a “cryptologically useful quantum computer” – a machine considerably faster than classic computers, The Washington Post reported Thursday
The implications of the NSA building a quantum computer are far reaching. Such a machine would open the door to cracking the strongest encryption tools in use today, including a standard known as RSA that scrambles communications and make them impossible to read for anyone except the intended recipient. RSA is commonly used in Web browsers for encrypted emails and secure financial transactions.
The development of such a machine has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, and would have revolutionary implications for fields like medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission.
The NSA reportedly sees itself as in a race with European uniion and Swiss sponsored quantum computing labs.
“The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European uniion and Switzerland,” one NSA document says, according to the Washington Post.
The Snowden documents also indicate that the NSA has been carrying out a part of its research in large shielded rooms designed to prevent electromagnetic energy from leaking. The rooms are required in order to keep quantum computing experiments running.
