2019-01-01_Discover

82 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

Facebook Faces the Music

FROM LEFT: ERIC LUCERO/GOOGLE; CONNIE ZHOU/IBM. TIMELINE FROM LEFT: SIPA VIA AP IMAGES; ANDREW HARNIK/AP IMAGES

TECH

Quantum computing gets its “Hello World” moment,

and water harvesters make a splash. BY STEPHEN ORNES

Approaching

Quantum

Supremacy

Tech experts have long

championed quantum computers

as the next generation of machine,

promising to solve big problems

in lightning-fast

time, but the

delicate chips

exist in only a

handful of labs.

In the race to

build the largest

one yet, Google

shot ahead in

March when

it unveiled

Bristlecone, a 72-qubit device

with low error rates. The previous

record holder was a 50-qubit

IBM machine.

Qubits do for quantum

computers what bits, usually

stored on transistors, do for

classical computers: They carry

out computations and store

information. But unlike traditional

March 17

Newspaper investigations reveal Cambridge

Analytica, a data consulting firm, harvested the

personal data of around 87 million Facebook users.

The company analyzed an individual’s networks

and “likes” to better target political ads, and used

that info to advise politicians’ campaigns.

March 25

In a public letter,

Facebook founder and

CEO Mark Zuckerberg

apologizes for his

company’s role in the

data mining.

Computing scientists at IBM (above) and elsewhere are working on achieving “quantum

supremacy,” when computers based on quantum processes will outdo traditional machines.

Google’s

Bristlecone