From a New York Times science writer, the first book on what will be the next big breakthrough in cyberworld: the development of a quantum computer. (Bookshop)Quantum computer works best switched off
Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running.
The idea behind the feat, first proposed in 1998, is to put a quantum computer into a “superposition”, a state in which it is both running and not running. It is as if you asked Schrödinger's cat to hit "Run".
[Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign send a photon into a system of mirrors and other optical devices, which included a set of components that run a simple database search by changing the properties of the photon. The system uses a quantum trick called the Zeno effect.]
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