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Leo wanted a plain answer . A headline had said quantum computers would break the locks on ordinary encrypted mail . His sister Imani worked with a research group , and he wanted to know whether that break had already happened . He took the train to the lab and stood beside a white cylinder that hummed . Inside it , a small chip sat in the cold . This kind of quantum computer uses superconducting circuits , and those circuits have to stay near absolute zero . A classical bit is zero or one . A qubit on that chip can be held in superposition , a mix of zero and one , until the machine measures it . Imani said the state is easy to lose . Heat , a shake , or a stray signal can knock it apart . People call that decoherence . The cylinder was there to keep the world out . Leo asked about the lock . She named Shor's algorithm . On a large and stable quantum computer , that algorithm can factor huge numbers far faster than the classical methods used for the same job . A common kind of public - key encryption depends on that factoring being hard . A machine able to run Shor's algorithm at that scale would matter . She tapped the cylinder . This one could not . Its qubits were few , and they were noisy . Errors show up before a long calculation can finish . He had read that entangled qubits influence each other instantly , across any distance . Imani stopped him . Entangled qubits are correlated , so a measurement of one is tied to the other . The tie is real . It is not a channel for sending a message . The line he had read had taken a careful fact and made it louder . They walked back toward the stairs . The locks on ordinary encrypted mail were still beyond this chip . Researchers were trying to hold qubits steady for longer and to correct errors , and Imani would not name a year . Leo had the answer he came for . The headline pointed at a direction of work . It did not describe the machine in the room .
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