AS FUTURISTIC as quantum computers seem, what with all those qubits and entangled atoms, here is an idea that promises to make atom-based quantum computers look passé even before anyone has built a full-sized version.
It seems that bubbles of electrons lined up in ultracold liquid helium could be used to build a quantum computer capable of carrying out a staggering 1030 simultaneous calculations.
To carry out these simultaneous calculations, quantum computers normally exploit entities such as atoms and molecules, which can be in several quantum states at once, to encode bits in those quantum states – the famous…
