A couple of years ago I met Andrea Morello from the University of New South Wales at the March 2016 meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore. My colleague Tushna Commissariat filmed him answering the question: what could you do with a 50- or 100-qubit quantum computer (see video above).

Well, time waits for no-one, and now Morello has written the guest editorial for a new focus issue of the journal Quantum Science and Technology, which contains five Perspective articles by some of the world’s top quantum-technology researchers on the question: “What would you do with 1000 qubits?” (They’re a bit greedy those quantum dudes, aren’t they?)

The articles, which are all free to read for 30 days (until 19 July 2018), offer “a candid and hype-free illustration of how the field of quantum information science is designing the path towards practical quantum computers”. Now if you think I’m just saying that because Quantum Science and Technology is a journal from IOP Publishing, which also publishes Physics World, then I guess you’ll just have to read them for yourself.