THEY say a watched pot never boils. Thanks to a quirk of quantum mechanics, a similar thing can be said of atoms, which refuse to decay while you peek at them. A new plan to exploit this effect may overcome one of the biggest obstacles to building a quantum computer.
In theory, quantum computers should be far superior to their conventional counterparts because they will rapidly manipulate huge amounts of information stored in quantum bits, or qubits. To build a working quantum computer, the atoms that make up these qubits must be “entangled” – inextricably linked so that making a…
