Why Google’s quantum computing ‘breakthrough’ could be about to change everything

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Researchers working on one of the technology giant’s quantum computers achieved what is known as quantum supremacy, the paper claims, thus heralding a new era of incomprehensibly powerful machines. Rather than using traditional bits – the ‘1’s’ and ‘0’s’ used in digital communications – quantum computers make use of qubits. Physicist David Deutsch, one of the early pioneers of quantum computers, once famously claimed that they could solve problems that would take today’s computers longer than the age of the universe to solve. Beyond theories that we are actually living inside The Matrix, this ability to perform complex simulations could eventually see quantum computers simulate the beginnings of the universe and maybe one day answer some of science’s most puzzling questions.