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IBM scientist Andreas Fuhrer looks at the cryogenic refrigerator which keeps a quantum computers qubits super cold.

Peter Griffin is a freelance science and technology writer. He was the founding director of the Science Media Centre and founding editor of Sciblogs.co.nz

OPINION: You have to hand it to the likes of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrdinger, scientists who were instrumental in developing the field of quantum mechanics about 100 years ago.

They had their work cut out for them trying to explain to a sceptical public the forces that dictate how the world works on the atomic and subatomic scale.

Even Albert Einstein whose own discoveries were towering reference points for these scientists could never reconcile that quantum measurements and observations are fundamentally random.

"It is this view against which my instinct revolts," he wrote in 1945.

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Weve learned much about quantum mechanics since then, including how the principles of superposition and entanglement explain how information can be processed in ways computers like our laptops and smartphones cant match.

Last week I stood for the first time in front of a fully functioning quantum computer, IBMs Quantum System One, at the companys research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York.

The machine looks like a beautiful gold chandelier shrouded in a metal case that creates a vacuum in which the whole device is chilled to just above absolute zero, as cold as outer space.

The highly controlled conditions are required to eliminate interference that could prevent the quantum chip at the tip of the chandelier from doing its thing, which is to activate qubits the quantum version of the bits, the digital ones and zeros our binary computers work with.

IBM, Google, Microsoft and numerous other companies and research institutions have demonstrated how quantum computers are very good at a narrow range of computational tasks, such as simulating nature. Thats already seen them put to work modelling molecules and in the complex field of materials science.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Stuff science columnist Peter Griffin.

Programmers are now working on computer algorithms to expand the ways in which quantum computers can be used. Cryptography experts think large quantum computers could crack existing encryption systems, which would cause a cybersecurity nightmare.

But quantum computers will need to scale up massively in power and be less prone to errors to be useful more broadly. IBM last year produced Eagle, a 127-qubit processor for its quantum computer and plans to introduce Osprey, its 433-qubit chip this year.

Eventually machines with hundreds of thousands or millions of qubits could be available for number crunching on a scale weve never seen before.

It's unlikely youll ever have a quantum computer on your desk or in your garage. Instead, IBM and its rivals rent access to their quantum computers as a cloud computing service.

Todays regular computers arent heading for the dustbin either. They are better at a wide range of tasks and can work in tandem to make quantum computers more useful.

Its unclear whether quantum computing can be properly applied to solving the big problems facing the world new antibiotics or climate change.

But the blistering pace of technical progress suggests it's a field heating up and one worth watching.

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I beheld a quantum computer. It was weird and excellent. - Stuff