The Ministry of Defence has purchased the government's first Quantum Computer

The government's first Quantum Computer has been acquired by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Quantum computers can perform extremely complex calculations very quickly, and their creators claim they can solve problems that regular computers cannot.

The Ministry of Defence will collaborate with the British company Orca Computing to investigate quantum technology applications in defence. Stephen Till of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) described it as a "milestone moment."

Most computers in our homes and workplaces process data in bits, which have binary values of zero or one. Quantum computers, on the other hand, process data using a two-state unit known as a qubit. This can represent digits like one or zero at the same time using a quantum mechanical process known as superposition, allowing quantum computers to bridge binary digits and deal with uncertainty in ways that regular computers cannot.

According to quantum computing experts and physicists, this means that problems that have taken average computers years to solve could now be solved in a matter of minutes.

Prof Winfried Hensinger, director of the University of Sussex's Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies, believes that the true potential of quantum computers will take time to manifest.