The labor pool in quantum computing is even smaller. Over the past several years, scientists have shown that they can build these machines, if only on a small scale. When some types of matter are extremely small or extremely cold, they behave differently. That difference allows a quantum bit, or qubit, to store a combination of 1 and 0. As the number of qubits grows, a quantum computer becomes exponentially more powerful.

Source: New York Times October 21, 2018 20:15 UTC