To put that into perspective, the average lifespan of a sun such as Earth's is 10 billion years, so it would take one quadrillion solar lifetimes for the leading supercomputer to do what Google's Willow can do in five minutes.

Instead of operating in 0s and 1s, such as "classical computers," a quantum computer uses much smaller units of computation called qubits. Typically, the more qubits used by a computer, the more errors are present in the computation. However, the more qubits used by Google's model, the fewer errors. As a result, Willow is able to operate at 105 qubits, far greater than anything else in existence, with little error.

Using quantum mechanics, Willow will be able to help simulate molecular interactions to develop new drugs faster than ever, design advanced materials, and create more sophisticated financial models.

It will also be able to accelerate machine learning algorithms to enhance artificial intelligence, create new encryption methods, and break existing ones. One concern that has been raised by cryptographic experts is its ability to break encryption involved in cryptocurrency wallets and mining algorithms, or even messaging applications, which would allow a user to steal funds, take over entire blockchain networks, or hack communications.

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Developers have already been working on solutions for this, with the advent of mainstream quantum computing on the horizon. Apple, for example, announced a cryptographic messaging upgrade that includes "quantum proof" encryption in February. Blockchain developers are also working on similar upgrades.

While the ability to operate at 105 qubits is an incredible feat, experts said it would require millions of qubits to be able to exploit Bitcoin's elliptic-curve signatures involved in securing wallets or break its SHA-256 hashing algorithm.