Why Quantum Computers Will Be Super Awesome, Someday

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was the first to suggest that the mind-bending properties of quantum mechanics could be harnessed to make a new kind of computer. Almost 40 years later and after a decade of significant progress, it’s still easier to describe quantum computing’s potential importance — potential, because it barely exists — than to describe how it works. Understanding quantum mechanics, whose principles underpin quantum computing, involves a lot of mental mountain climbing — like something about a cat in a box that might or might not be dead?

Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., calls quantum computing one of three emerging technologies that will radically reshape the world, along with artificial intelligence and augmented reality. In the long run, quantum computers might make today’s fastest supercomputer look like an abacus. Now, however, your laptop can solve problems pretty much just as quickly. Tasks that seem more within reach include speeding up chemical reactions by creating more efficient catalysts, helping discover new drugs and improving the algorithms that shape industrial logistics and supply chains.