The commonly used RSA encryption algorithm can now be cracked by a quantum computer with only 100,000 qubits, but the technical challenges to building such a machine remain numerous ...

Introduction Envision our digital world as a sprawling universe filled with glittering constellations of encrypted data, each packet of information ...

Quantum computers—devices that process information using quantum mechanical effects—have long been expected to outperform classical systems on certain tasks. Over the past few decades, researchers ...

Deep within the source code of this online multiplayer game lies an enigmatic number that puzzles and inspires experts to this day ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...

One day in November, a product strategist we’ll call Michelle (not her real name), logged into her LinkedIn account and switched her gender to male. She also changed her name to Michael, she told ...

Tor has announced improved encryption and security for the circuit traffic by replacing the old tor1 relay encryption algorithm with a new design called Counter Galois Onion (CGO). One reason behind ...

Alphabet Inc.’s Google ran an algorithm on its “Willow” quantum-computing chip that can be repeated on similar platforms and outperform classical supercomputers, a breakthrough it said clears a path ...

Designed to accelerate advances in medicine and other fields, the tech giant’s quantum algorithm runs 13,000 times as fast as software written for a traditional supercomputer. A quantum computer at ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...