The Race to Avert Quantum Computing Threat With New Encryption Standards

They call it Q-Day: the day when a quantum computer, one more powerful than any yet built, could shatter the world of privacy and security as we know it. It would happen through a bravura act of mathematics: the separation of some very large numbers, hundreds of digits long, into their prime factors. That might sound like a meaningless division problem, but it would fundamentally undermine the encryption protocols that governments and corporations have relied on for decades. Sensitive information such as military intelligence, weapons designs, industry secrets and banking…

Maths teacher’s breathtaking claim about death rate in China was right | Letter

The maths teacher who said “Every time I breathe, somebody dies in China” is correct (Letters, 4 October). The death rate in China is over seven per thousand people, and with a population of more than 1.4 billion people this means more than 9.8 million people die in China each year. The normal breathing rate for adults is around 16 breaths per minute. This leads to 16 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 = 8,415,360 breaths per year. Even taking a higher rate of 18 breaths per minute leads to…