Computer scientists’ daydreams have revealed the power of quantum mechanics. Imagine meeting omniscient beings who claim to have the solution to a complex problem that no computer could ever solve.

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. – A small Microsoft Research team had lofty goals when it set out four years ago to create an analog optical computer that would use light as a medium for solving complex problems.

Quantum computing has great promise to solve problems that are too hard for classical computers to solve in reasonable amounts of time, but they are not yet practical There’s no lack of hype in the ...