How Will Quantum Mechanics Change Computing?

In early July, Google announced that it will expand its commercially available cloud computing services to include quantum computing. A similar service has been available from IBM since May. These aren’t services most regular people will have a lot of reason to use yet. But making quantum computers more accessible will help government, academic and corporate research groups around the world continue their study of the capabilities of quantum computing.

Understanding how these systems work requires exploring a different area of physics than most people are familiar with. From everyday experience we are familiar with what physicists call “classical mechanics,” which governs most of the world we can see with our own eyes, such as what happens when a car hits a building, what path a ball takes when it’s thrown and why it’s hard to drag a cooler across a sandy beach.

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