www.bbc.com
Imagine a world where encrypted, secret files are suddenly cracked open – something known as “the quantum apocalypse”.
Put very simply, quantum computers work completely differently from the computers developed over the past century. In theory, they could eventually become many, many times faster than today’s machines.
That means that faced with an incredibly complex and time-consuming problem – like trying to decrypt data – where there are multiple permutations running into the billions, a normal computer would take many years to break those encryptions, if ever.
