Is computing doomed to reach a standstill in the near future? Perhaps not. So far, Alexei Tyryshkin, a research scholar at the Hoyt Laboratory at Princeton University, has been able to control the spins of billions of electrons using highly purified silicon-28 for up to 10 seconds. While this is an impressive amount of time in the quantum world, it is not sufficient for our needs. However, if this technology can be extended for greater periods of time and more complex processing units, there is great promise for quantum computing. Traditionally, computer signals are encoded in strings of ones and zeros, called binary code. Quantum particles are known for their uncertainty, and the ability to inherently code for probabilities rather than discrete values could unlock a myriad of as yet unseen potential in computing.
