Computing with light.

Science Daily isn’t talking about fiberoptics. They’re looking at the latest breakthroughs that take the “electrons” out of “electronics” by using photons to process information:

Scientists from the Group of Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer — the boson sampling computer.

The huge advantage of photons — a particular type of bosons — lies in their high mobility.

“According to the laws of quantum physics, the photons seem to take all possible paths at the same time. This is known as superposition. Amazingly, one can record the outcome of the computation rather trivially: one measures how many photons exit in which output of the network,” explains Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics.

Photon computers can go way, way faster than electronic computers because they can literally be in more places at once. Superposition. Instead of yes-no circuits, yes-no-yes and no-neither yes nor no all become potential bits of information.