If you want to know how fucked up the concept of Quantum Computing is, here's an example:
Imagine you have an unsorted list of N things. If you want to search this list for a specific value, the best you can achieve with traditional computing is to check each value of the list, stopping when you find the one you're looking for. This method runs in linear time (the expected number of checks is 0.5 times N, which is proportional to N, hence linear time).
Now with a Quantum Computer, using Grover's algorithm you can actually search the list in sqrt(N) time! If you don't yet see how fucked up this is, consider that you're actually doing less operations than the number of items in the list, i.e., for a big enough problem, the traditional computer (or any human looking at the list) didn't even have time to check each element yet, no matter how fast it is!
My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957
