Katia Riddle

In a quantum computer, you would instead have 20 light switches with dimmers, all set to varying degrees of brightness.

Now, this does not mean that quantum computers instantly solve everything.

But that potential parallelism in problem solving is why people are so excited.

No, that's going to be a long time until that happens.

Right now, they're huge, like the size of a refrigerator.

Secondly, they are cold, colder than some places in space.

Inside of them is equipment like microwave wires, shielding layers, filters.

And then at the very bottom is this quantum processor, which carries signals down to the quantum chip.

Yes, exactly.

It's like a giant onion with a tiny one to two centimeter chip at the very heart of it.

That's all.

Yes.

So many scientists genuinely believe quantum computing could help with things like simulating molecules or developing new materials, because those problems are just incredibly complex, too complex for classical computers.

But another guy I talked to, Bill Pfefferman, he's focused his life's work on quantum physics, and he's pretty skeptical about its actual usefulness.

Bill is a computer scientist at the University of Chicago.

He says the field is still just very early.

We don't have quantum computers that can do useful real-world tasks yet.

Right.

Before we can use quantum computing to, for example, cure cancer, we have to make sure that quantum computers we have are accurate.

That is a really, really hard task.