Microsoft just made what is possibly the biggest announcement in my lifetime. The company’s new 8-qubit Majorana 1 quantum computing chip could usher in an era of rapid change like mankind has never seen. I lay out what makes this technology so game-changing, what a “topological conductor” is, and what the world might look like in just a few years if these chips are deployed in computers or given to AI. But just as impressive is the other thing the CEO of Microsoft announced: the creation of a new state of matter.