Has the era of quantum computing finally dawned? In a field long plagued by hype and hubris, there’s reason for some cautious optimism. A team of scientists at Google’s research lab announced last week in the journal Nature that they had built a quantum computer that could perform calculations in about 200 seconds that would take a classical supercomputer some 10,000 years to do. An age of “quantum supremacy” was duly declared. Rather uncharitably, IBM researchers were quick to point out that the feat was less than advertised. They estimated that by using all of the hard disk space at the world’s most powerful ... (full story)