Quantum Frontiers
Qubits
What’s going on
Ordinary computers store information as bits that are off (0) or on (1). A qubit, made from a single atom, a photon or a tiny superconducting circuit, can be in a superposition with some amount of 0 and some of 1. Measure it and you get just 0 or 1, with odds set by the blend. Many qubits can also be entangled, which gives quantum computers their unusual power.
Myth
A qubit can store unlimited information.
Fact
Measuring it gives you just one bit.
Learn more
M. A. Nielsen and I. L. Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information (Cambridge, 2010).
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