Sulfur Bacteria Offers Luminous Clues for Quantum Computing By In the depths of the ocean, there's a teeny sulfur bacteria that can harvest light with exquisite efficiency. It does so in a quantum way, by trapping an elusive light photon and sending it simultaneously on all paths to its reaction center for photosynthesis. Its success has baffled scientists, who grapple with cryogenic fortresses to maintain the most basic quantum activity in a computer. But recently, a team of engineers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities has isolated the enigma that makes the bacteria a quantum master. Quantum computing is built on particles called qubits. Unlike the electrons used in classical computers which have one voltage or another and follow instructions sequentially (if 0, then 1), qubits have an excited spin that give them the weird property of occupying all voltages at once, enabling them to follow multiple instructions concurrently and exponentially as qubits are added. The ability offers a tantalizing glance into a world where computers can instantaneously test millions of data variations to crack a code, target a cell's pathway, scope the universe for life or any data set to apply to a model. To date however, scientists can only manipulate about 10 qubits, limiting them to a very narrow task capacity. To avoid particle chaos, scientists have to freeze equipment to near absolute zero, which is colder than interstellar space — not something you could manage in your living room. The famous D-Wave Computer, sold to NASA, Google and Lockheed Martin, requires elaborate pulse fridges and Helium-3 to keep it cold and the Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation use charged barium chloride molecules in a super cloud of calcium atoms. Particle chaos can also creep in from atmospheric electro-magnetic waves and the equipment's nuclear spin, requiring sophisticated magnetic vacuums. To peel back the mystery of how