Since 2016, IBM has offered online access to a quantum computer. Anyone can log in and execute commands on a 5-qubit or 14-qubit machine located in Yorktown Heights, New York, from the comfort of their own home. This month, I finally tried it—nervously. I did not know what I was doing and worried I might break the hardware. “You won’t mess anything up,” IBM physicist James Wootton assured me via Skype. Courtesy of Sophia ChenI chose the 5-qubit machine.

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