MIT's New 5-Atom Quantum Computer Could Make Today's Encryption Obsolete (pcworld.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or "quibits," that can be simultaneously 0 and 1 -- a state known as a superposition that's far more efficient. It typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found a way to pare that down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom, they said this week. Using laser pulses to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, the new system promises scalability as well, as more atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer able to factor much larger numbers. That, in turn, presents new risks for factorization-based methods such as RSA, used for protecting credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data. "If you are a nation state, you probably don't want to publicly store your secrets using encryption that relies on factoring as a hard-to-invert problem," said Chuang. "Because when these quantum computers start coming out, [adversaries will] be able to go back and unencrypt all those old secrets."

Comments

Re:Quantum computers were "5 years away"... in 197

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Now they're just 5 atoms away.

But what if we add more lasers?

[SciCom Luke]

https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

Re:Totally misleading title

[fahrbot-bot]

Luckily, this univers is chock FULL of atoms. All we could possibly need!

But it's, apparently, short on "e"s. :-)

Re:Totally misleading title

[Jason Levine]

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