Efforts are being made by several companies that are leading their way to develop quantum computing.IBM has developed a 53-bit qubit quantum computer. In October 2019 google officially declared that it has achieved quantum supremacy. There are several companies like Accenture, Microsoft, Atos Quantum and more which are leading their way to develop a feasible quantum computer and make them commercially available.

What is a Quantum computer and how it works?

Quantum physics describes how the atom work and the behaviour of the fundamental particles like electron and photons. Quantum computers operate on Quantum mechanics by controlling the behaviour of fundamental particles. It works on Quantum mechanics phenomena, such as Superposition and uncertainty principle and entanglement to perform the task. A simple computer works on bits (0 or 1) a simple computer can have an only one state at a time but a Quantum computer works on quantum bits(qubit) which can be a superposition of state. It can work parallel on different state at one time.

Over the century physicists have discovered that quantum particles behave weirdly. This led to the branch of physics known as a Quantum mechanics.

Quantum computer with the aid of qubits works on stimulating the behaviour of quantum particles existing in nature which makes Quantum computer way faster than Supercomputers.

Just like a spinning coin when it is in a spinning state we can’t determine whether it turns to head or tail i.e it is in both the states simultaneously. Similarly, qubits are in the same state i.e they can measure a number of possibilities at a time which makes Quantum computer way faster.

Entanglement is the other phenomenon which qubits are capable of doing. It is a physical relationship between qubits they seem to be known what happens to another even they are physically separated. If you measure one qubit (i.e., collapse its superposition to a single state, it will have the same impact on the others in the system.

That seems to be crazy right. Even no one can really understand how it works. Quantum computers have the potential to work on designing new medicines, developing new catalyst however it requires million of qubits whereas even a most sophisticated computer in the world today is made using 72 qubits claimed by google. Since qubits require temperature nearer to absolute zero which is the major roadblock in developing of quantum computers.

What things Quantum computer are capable of doing ?

Quantum computers are really fast and efficient. This computer will far more powerful even than the supercomputers. Quantum computers have the potential to solve the problem of global significance.

Quantum computers have a significance in designing medicines to fight disease because it works using the same quantum properties as the molecule is trying to stimulate. Reason being developing drugs is a challenging problem today because it’s really difficult to calculate all the quantum properties of all the atoms in the molecules even for supercomputers. So it can lead to treatments like Coronavirus which is affecting billions of lives.

Quantum computer with huge computational power is ideal to solve problems such as cybersecurity, Financial modelling, creating encryption methods and development in AI.

Quantum computer has recently set the record for finding prime number factors.

Companies are leading their way to developing and it still requires a lot of work.

There are some obstacles that seem impossible to overcome and we can’t predict anything right now. Let us see what gone happen in future.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment below and have a wonderful day.