Anybody can find out how to crack the codes protecting your bank transfers and online credit card purchases. The step-by-step instructions for stripping away the secrecy were published years ago.
Nobody is very worried about a possible security breach, though, because the code-cracking formula runs only on quantum computers. These contraptions, which exploit the rules governing the fuzzy world of quantum mechanics, have so far remained laboratory curiosities, less powerful than a slide rule.
New blueprints could change all that. Rival technologies that have steadily matured in recent years — but failed to produce powerful quantum computers on their own — are now being married. Physicists playing matchmaker hope to build hybrid devices greater than the sum of their parts, dynamic duos in the spirit of Batman and Robin.
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