Just when we thought computer could not get any faster, scientists have made an important step forward in quantum computing, BBC News reported.

A team of scientists was able to maintain a fragile quantum memory state stable at room temperature for 39 minutes, soaring to a new world record. The superposed state of a quantum bit, or qubit, occurs when its binary number is both 1 and 0 at the same time and the team posted a time nearly 100 times better than the previous record.

Traditional computers store information with either 1s or 0s, but quantum computing can enter a state of superposition where qubits use 1s and 0s at the same time to perform multiple calculations at the same time. If this technology is properly handled, it could be reproduced and ultimately change computing radically.

"This opens the possibility of truly long-term storage of quantum information at room temperature," said lead researcher Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University, Canada.

His team published their work in the journal Science.

There is not an official world record for quantum computing, but the previous mark recognized was 25 seconds at room temperature. The major obstacle still holding quantum computing back is instability. At a temperature of near-absolute zero (-269 C), the qubits remained stable for three hours. At room temperature, they were only stable for 39 minutes.

"Having such robust, as well as long-lived, qubits could prove very helpful for anyone trying to build a quantum computer," said study co-author Stephanie Simmons, of Oxford University's department of materials.

"39 minutes may not seem very long. But these lifetimes are many times longer than previous experiments," she said. "We've managed to identify a system that seems to have basically no noise."

The unofficial world record was Dr. Thaddeus Ladd's, formerly of Stanford University's Quantum Information Science unit, to lose.

"It's remarkable that these coherence states could be held for so long in a measurable system - as measurement normally introduces noise," he told BBC News. "It's also a nice surprise that nothing goes wrong warming up and cooling the sample again - from an experimental point of view that's pretty remarkable."

Ladd's team held the qubits stable at room temperature for 25 seconds, a small fraction of the new "world record."

"What is perhaps most important is that this is silicon," he said. "The global investment in this particular material means that it has a lot of potential for engineering."