Definition: A qubit is a term from the nascent field of quantum computing which is a shortened form of the term "quantum bit." A traditional computer bit can store information in states of either 1 or 0 ("on" or "off"), while a quantum bit can store information in states of 1, 0, and as a combination of both states simultaneously due to quantum superposition.
A quantum computer designed to use qubits to store and process information would be able, in theory, to process information much more quickly than a traditional computer, using a process known as quantum parallelism.
