From the article:

” home new advances bring the era of quantum computers closer than ever

Quantum computing New Advances Bring the Era of Quantum Computers Closer Than Ever By Charlie Wood April 3, 2026

Two research groups say they have significantly reduced the amount of qubits and time required to crack common online security technologies.

Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine Introduction Some 30 years ago, the mathematician Peter Shor(opens a new tab) took a niche physics project — the dream of building a computer based on the counterintuitive rules of quantum mechanics — and shook the world.

Shor worked out a way for quantum computers to swiftly solve a couple of math problems that classical computers could complete only after many billions of years. Those two math problems happened to be the ones that secured the then-emerging digital world. The trustworthiness of nearly every website, inbox, and bank account rests on the assumption that these two problems are impossible to solve. Shor’s algorithm proved that assumption wrong.

For 30 years, Shor’s algorithm has been a security threat in theory only. Physicists initially estimated that they would need a colossal quantum machine with billions of qubits — the elements used in quantum calculations — to run it. That estimate has come down drastically over the years, falling recently to a million qubits. But it has still always sat comfortably beyond the modest capabilities of existing quantum computers, which typically have just hundreds of qubits.