Quantum computing may break the internet

We entrust our lives to the internet: bank accounts, medical records, dating profiles, family history — even our shopping lists and pet photos. Digital security systems use mathematical formulas to encrypt information and keep the snoops and crooks at bay. But quantum computing could bust through many online security protections.

Blame the weirdness of the quantum world. There, tiny particles do things that seem to defy logic, such as existing in two contradictory states at once.