One step closer to a quantum computer

It sounds like something out of Star Trek, and the science behind it has often been just as hokey. Actual engineers and scientists (Geordie LaForge doesn't count) have been working on technology to build computers that work at an atomic level. Why? Because an atomic computer could be totally tiny and unimaginably fast. You'd want one — once they cost less than a billion dollars.

The big discovery uses lots of confusing definitions, but the final result is that the researchers have used photons
(little bits of light) to carry ions spinning in different directions to represent the zeros and ones. Photons are the new copper, people.