Building a utility-scale quantum computer that can crack one of the most vital cryptosystems—elliptic curves—doesn’t require nearly the resources anticipated just a year or two ago, two independently ...

In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor showed that a quantum computer could factor large numbers fast enough to break the encryption used to secure most of the internet. Thirty-two years later, no one has ...

Quantum computers promise to outperform today's traditional computers in many areas of science, including chemistry, physics, and cryptography, but proving they will be superior has been challenging.

This article is part of a package on the future of quantum computing. Read about the most promising applications of these machines here and see an illustrated field guide to qubits here. Inside a ...

One of the central goals in quantum computation science is to design algorithms that outperform their classical counterparts. A prominent example is Shor’s algorithm for integer factorization 1, which ...

A breakdown of what type of risks quantum computing poses to Bitcoin, and how worried users of the network should be. In the early 2020s, quantum computing hit the public spotlight as a potential ...