The latest and greatest test of a quantum computing device has found it doesn't solve problems faster than a classical computer. But don't give up hope yet. The researchers who performed the test still think it's likely quantum computers have advantages over classical ones, at least for solving certain problems. Among other things, testers think they just have to find the right problems.

Sometimes you just have to look around. A new analysis of a common blue pigment—it's used in the British five-pound note—found it has some unusual properties that make it a candidate semiconductor for quantum computers.

In a case that's somewhat chicken-and-egg, one of the many reasons computer scientists and physicists are pursuing a working quantum computer is to model quantum systems themselves. Modeling some quantum properties for systems even with a just a few dozen particles is impossible on even the biggest conventional supercomputers, and the pursuit of new materials and next-level science requires that we find a way to do so. So it's notable that physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have constructed a quantum simulator can simulate interaction between hundreds of quantum bits.

Silicon semiconductors have taken us a dazzling distance along the computing road. But even if they continue unabated to get faster and more powerful (and it's growing more difficult to make that happen) there's a limit to what classical computing can do.