In this case, the laws govern the tiniest objects in the universe. Quantum mechanics is entirely unlike anything in the world of ordinary experiences. The laws are so bizarre they seem made up. Yet they've been proven time and again. It's something else.
Scientists call it a qubit.
If you put a bunch of qubits together, they don't do calculations linearly like today's computers. They are, in a sense, doing all possible calculations at the same time - in a way, straddling all the possible answers. The act of measuring the qubits stops the calculating process and forces them to settle on an answer. Forty qubits could have the power of one of today's supercomputers. A supercomputer trying to find one phone number in a database of all the world's phone books would take a month, Chuang says.