In an unassuming brick building in Cambridge, Mass., a lab buzzes – literally – with technology so powerful it could lead to the discovery of new planets, help detect cancer earlier, create hacker-proof computer networks and transmit live video from the surface of Mars.
Welcome to Raytheon's hub of quantum computing, a new field that uses subatomic particles to store digital information. It's one of hundreds of futuristic research programs at Raytheon, from "intelligent" power systems to computer chips made of diamond.
"We're inventing things here," said Jonathan Habif, a senior scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies. "There's so much technology that's yet to be explored and discovered." Habif works in the Quantum Information Processing group, which is learning to use subatomic particles instead of silicon circuits to store the 1s and 0s that make up computer data. Unlike normal "bits" of data, quantum bits — or "qubits" can exist in both states at the same time.
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