Google Pioneers Hybrid Approach to Quantum Computing

The 8 Ball supercomputer, a spherical monolith that can harness the rules of quantum mechanics to solve vastly complex problems, is not real. It's actually a quantum computer that appeared in a short story written by science fiction novelist Gregory Dale Bear last year. Such computers have yet to escape the realm of science fiction, but recent advances have moved the prospect of a working quantum computer closer to reality. Scientists from Google and the University of Basque Country in Spain believe they have cleared some of the barriers to more complex and useful quantum computers. The technology is based on the idea of quantum bits, or qubits, which loosely correspond to the classic bits stored inside the transistors etched onto silicon. The qubits are capable of encoding more data than the 1's and 0's that form the basis of modern computing.