Breakthrough Paves Way for Affordable Quantum Computers

[Zikes]

> "We demonstrated that a highly coherent qubit, like the spin of a single phosphorus atom in isotopically enriched silicon, can be controlled using electric fields, instead of using pulses of oscillating magnetic fields"

Isn't getting a qubit into a coherent state in the first place one of the biggest hurdles in quantum computing? The headline seems to be putting the cart before the horse saying we'll get "affordable" quantum computers thanks to this.

I'm not knocking the scientists efforts, I don't doubt the worth of their discovery, but if science news articles were true we'd have flying solar powered cars with batteries the size of a cell phone that can recharge in under a minute.

[whitewhim]

Putting a qubit in a coherent state really isn't a technical challenge anymore. The challenge these days is getting it to stay in a coherent state (ie. avoid decoherence) long enough to be able to perform gates on the qubit and perform computations. I'm about half way through the paper so far and I really think it is quite an interesting approach and result.

[copsarebastards]

Jesus, please don't upvote this clickbait headline. It's literally lying to get attention.

We don't have any quantum computers yet. We will probably have unaffordable quantum computers before we'll have affordable quantum computers. This headline is not even a believable lie.

[lisper]

Just because the headline is lying doesn't mean the article doesn't contain useful and interesting information. The popular press exaggerates headlines all the time to get attention, and HN guidelines mandate submitting with the original headline.