Quantum computing is computing at its most esoteric. It's an experimental, enormously complex, sometimes downright confusing technology that's typically the domain of hardcore academics and organizations like Google and NASA. But that might be changing.

Today, IBM unveiled an online service that lets anyone use the five-qubit quantum computer its researchers have erected at a research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York. You can access the machine over the Internet via a simple software interface—or at least it's simple if you understand the basics of quantum computing. This new service is hardly something the everyday consumer will use, but it's a big deal for the many researchers now working to build a practical quantum computer—a computer that moves beyond just 1s and 0s to become exponentially more powerful than today's machines. In that sense, IBM is indeed striving to bring quantum computing to the world at large.

'I think that someone out there will learn things about the behavior of this quantum computer that its developers never thought of.'

Yes, the service is a way for IBM to show off its quantum computer, to have outsiders verify and approve its work—something that's particularly important when you're dealing with the hard-to-pin-down dynamics of quantum systems. But David DiVincenzo, a professor at the Institute for Quantum Information at RWTH Aachen University and one of quantum computing's earliest pioneers, believes the service will lead to more. "I think that someone out there will learn things about the behavior of this quantum computer," he says, "that its developers never thought of."

That's an important thing as researchers seek to unlock new realms of technology with this kind of machine, including everything from understanding DNA sequences to predicting the rise and fall of the stock market. Some aim to simulate the way individual molecules interact, while others hope that quantum computers will extend the reach of machine learning. That's what Google and NASA are exploring with their $10 million D-Wave machine, a somewhat controversial creation that exhibits quantum properties in at least some situations.