Just want to share one of the advancement of a new hardware which implements the quantum computing for research, this idea is not new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing). However it is very hard to put into ptractical use especially large scale computing till now. This company, D-Wave (http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum-computing, here is the white paper for this system, http://www.dwavesys.com/sites/default/files/Map%20Coloring%20WP2.pdf) now developed hardware that could handle scalable quantum computing, and also according to one of the talks the founder presented, they have scientists/phyicisits from NASA, google, etc, working with them to solve reall problems. Here is one talk from youtube, you might be interested to take a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUlYV--lLAA, titled "D-Wave Founder Eric Ladizinsky - The Coming Quantum Computing Revolution". I am so excited to see this new hardware and efforts on this new computing scheme so that in the new future, we might have a SMART phone with quantum computation power. A nice picture is from http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a18475/google-nasa-d-wave-quantum-computer/