About QSMU

Hi, I'm Michael Quinn. I'm not a physicist. A while ago I got curious about quantum computing, mostly because I kept reading that it would change everything, from medicine to the encryption that protects my bank account, and I couldn't tell how much of that was true or when any of it might happen.

When I went looking for answers, most of what I found fell into two piles. One pile was textbooks and papers that assume you already know the math. The other was headlines announcing a breakthrough every week. Neither told me what a quantum computer can actually do today, so I started writing it down for myself in plain English, and QSMU is the result.

What's here

Each post on the blog takes one real question, like whether a quantum computer could read your texts, and works through it until the answer makes sense. Learn is a set of short lessons on the ideas underneath, each with a simulation you can play with. And because it's easy to repeat claims without checking them, Tested runs a handful of small programs every month on a real IBM quantum computer, using IBM's free plan, and publishes the dated results next to what a perfect machine would give.

Keeping it real

Posts link to the sources behind their numbers, and posts about our own experiments say exactly how each one was run, so you can check where a number came from. When I make a prediction, it carries the date I made it, so it can be measured against what happens in the future. When I get something wrong, I fix it and say what changed. If you spot a mistake, please email me at hello@qsmu.com.

QSMU has no sponsors and no ads. Questions and ideas for a post are welcome at the same address.