SAN JOSE, Calif., -- Scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center have performed the world's most complicated quantum-computer calculation to date. They caused a billion billion custom-designed ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — The most recent email you sent was likely encrypted using a tried-and-true method that relies on the idea that even the fastest computer would be unable to efficiently break a gigantic ...

When the Robert Redford film Sneakers hit theaters in 1992, most moviegoers had never heard of the Internet. They’d have guessed “World Wide Web” was a horror film involving spiders. And nobody knew ...

In 1994, Peter Shor, an American mathematician working at Bell Labs, published a paper with a wonky title and earth-shaking implications. In “Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Prime Factorization and ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Peter Shor is a poet. Here is a limerick he ...