Katia Riddle

That means a particle that can be in multiple potential states at once.

You've heard of Schrodinger's cat, dead and alive.

Like the universe hasn't decided if the cat is dead or alive until the box containing the cat is open.

It's a cloud of probabilities.

Right.

And this is a concept that's been around for a while, almost as long as the whole field that was established 100 years ago around the time of Niels Bohr and Einstein.

Yeah.

So what I've been talking about is quantum physics.

The idea with quantum computers is that they can actually use these behaviors.

We humans like to think we're smart, but nature is still much better than us at innovation.

If you can harness quantum to use in computing, then we can accurately simulate the behavior of molecules and subatomic particles.

Classical computers use bits, zeros and ones.

Everything your computer does is just a big pattern of those.

Quantum computing thinks in something called qubits, which can be zero and one at the same time in a probabilistic sense.

That's back to that superposition idea.

Exactly.

I went on a mission to find a metaphor to explain quantum computing.

And first of all, let me say there is no perfect metaphor.

But one that I got that was kind of helpful from Dominic Walliman, he's a physicist, is light switches.

So say you're trying to get your house lit just right.