another faux-WOTY

[Erin McKean]

Another not-so-new WOTY candidate: qubit. I've been catching up on
back issues of MIT's Technology Review and they had an article about
quantum computing. A qubit (I would guess from quantum + bit) has the
probability of either positive or negative spin, so you can use a lot
fewer of them to crunch bigger and bigger numbers. . . theoretically.
The problem is that once you look at them, they either have one or
the other (due to Heisenberg's Principle, I guess).

David, do you have a line on this one? It wasn't in the new RH. I
feel that English needs more words that begin with "Q".

Erin McKean
editor at verbatimmag.com