While we’re excited for what’s ahead, and we’re mindful of the wisdom left to us by the great Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

In many ways, the exercise of building a quantum computer is one long lesson in everything we don’t yet understand about the world around us. While the universe operates fundamentally at a quantum level, human beings don’t experience it that way. In fact many principles of quantum mechanics directly contradict our surface level observations about nature. Yet the properties of quantum mechanics hold enormous potential for computing. 

It is a long-standing challenge to find practical applications where quantum computers can provide dramatic speedups over classical computing. A recently proposed application is in topological data analysis. This can be used for a wide variety of tasks, such as predicting financial crashes and analyzing neural networks, so has the potential to greatly expand the applicability of quantum computers. 

We can think about today’s news in the context of building the first rocket that successfully left Earth’s gravity to touch the edge of space. At the time, some asked: Why go into space without getting anywhere useful? But it was a big first for science because it allowed humans to envision a totally different realm of travel to the moon, to Mars, to galaxies beyond our own. It showed us what was possible and nudged the seemingly impossible into frame. 

That’s what this milestone represents for the world of quantum computing: a moment of possibility.

I am inspired by what quantum computing could mean for the future of our users, customers and partners, and the world. We’ll continue to work towards a day when quantum computers can work in tandem with classical computers to expand the boundaries of human knowledge and help us find solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems.