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Microsoft (MSFT) on Wednesday announced a new kind of quantum computer chip that it says will make quantum computers useful in years, rather than decades in the future. The chip, called Majorana 1, uses what Microsoft says is a new type of material called a topoconductor, which the company claims takes advantage of a new state of matter that is not solid, liquid, or gas, but a topological state. The upshot is that Microsoft says its approach will help lead to chips that can perform complex tasks needed to research topics including material sciences and healthcare. Quantum computers are specialized...

· Scientists used a 5,564-qubit quantum computer to simulate and observe "false vacuum decay" — a process that could determine our Universe's ultimate fate by transitioning it to a more stable state· The research team created and tracked quantum bubbles containing up to 306 qubits, revealing how smaller bubbles bounce around among larger ones in a complex quantum dance that persisted for over 1,000 qubit time units· This breakthrough demonstrates how table-top quantum experiments can help us understand fundamental cosmic processes without requiring massive facilities like the Large Hadron ColliderNearly 50 years ago, physicist Sidney Coleman proposed an intriguing idea:...

The Senate on Thursday confirmed John Ratcliffe as CIA director, giving President Donald Trump the second member of his new Cabinet. Ratcliffe was director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term and is the first person to have held that position and the top post at the CIA, the nation’s premier spy agency. The Texas Republican is a former federal prosecutor who emerged as a fierce Trump defender while serving as a congressman during Trump’s first impeachment. The vote was 74-25. At his Senate hearing last week, Ratcliffe said the CIA must do better when it comes to using technology...

In a groundbreaking experiment, UNSW researchers successfully applied the Schrödinger’s cat concept using an antimony atom to enhance quantum computations. This method significantly improves the reliability of quantum data processing and error correction, potentially accelerating the advent of practical quantum computing.

Shares of D-Wave Quantum [down 36%] and its peers plunged Wednesday after Nvidia [AI chips] CEO Jensen Huang suggested that quantum computers are decades away...D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz told CNBC...that his company has big paying clients today.

Google’s quantum computing breakthrough on Monday has left the physicist who heads the project a believer in ‘the idea that we live in a multiverse.’

The breakthrough — achieving this "below threshold" milestone — means that errors in a quantum computer will reduce exponentially as you add more physical qubits. It charts a path for scaling up quantum machines in the future. The technology relies on logical qubits. This is a qubit encoded using a collection of physical qubits in a lattice formation. All the physical qubits in a single logical qubit share the same data, meaning if any qubits fail, calculations continue because the information can still be found within the logical qubit.

Quantum machine - Inside the 30-meter tube. (ETH Zurich/Daniel Winkler) Albert Einstein wasn't entirely convinced about quantum mechanics, suggesting our understanding of it was incomplete. In particular, Einstein took issue with entanglement, the notion that a particle could be affected by another particle that wasn't close by. Experiments since have shown that quantum entanglement is indeed possible and that two entangled particles can be connected over a distance. Now a new experiment further confirms it, and in a way we haven't seen before. In the new experiment, scientists used a 30-meter-long tube cooled to close to absolute zero to run...

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigation shows objects are not influenced solely by surroundings and may also lack definite properties prior2 measurement ...pairs of particles are sent off in different directions from a common source, targeted for two observers, Alice and Bob, each stationed at opposite ends of...

Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments with entangled particles. The physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments that proved the profoundly strange quantum nature of reality. Their experiments collectively established the existence of a bizarre quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, where two widely separated particles appear to share information despite having no conceivable way of communicating. Entanglement lay at the heart of a fiery clash in the 1930s between physics titans Albert Einstein on the one hand...

Google has developed a quantum computer that instantly makes calculations that would take the best existing supercomputers 47 years, in a breakthrough meant to establish beyond doubt that the experimental machines can outperform conventional rivals. A paper from researchers at Google published online claims that the company’s latest technology is “beyond the capabilities of existing classical supercomputers”. Proponents of quantum computers say the technology, which relies on the peculiar states of quantum physics, can create hugely powerful machines able to battle climate change and create breakthrough drugs. However, they also threaten to undermine today’s encryption systems, making them a national...

Researchers at Microsoft say they have created elusive quasiparticles called Majorana zero modes – but scientists outside the company are sceptical Microsoft researchers have made a controversial claim that they have seen evidence of an elusive particle that could solve some of the biggest headaches in quantum computing, but some experts are questioning the discovery. Quantum computers process information using quantum bits, or qubits, but current iterations can be prone to error. “What the field needs is a new kind of qubit,” says Chetan Nayak at Microsoft Quantum. He and his colleagues say they have taken a significant step...

Three scientists jointly won this year's Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their work on quantum information science that has significant applications, for example in the field of encryption. Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were cited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for discovering the way that particles known as photons can be linked, or "entangled," with each other even when they are separated by large distances. "Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field," said Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel committee. "It has broad and potential implications in areas such...

Chinese tech giant Baidu is developing its own quantum computer to compete with the United States in the race toward next-generation information processing. The computer does not outperform rivals currently being developed in America but, according to one expert, signals dire competition over the future of data security.A 3D Illustration of a futuristic computer processor. (James Thew/Adobe Stock)Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Hudson Institute, said that Baidu’s recently announced quantum effort fell short of similar efforts being made by companies like Google and IBM.“This quantum computer that they’re touting has only 10 qubits, and that’s...

National security memo warns that quantum computing could jeopardize civilian and military communications, and defeat security protocols for most Internet-based financial transactions The U.S. government is barreling ahead with plans to mitigate future threats from quantum computing with a new White House memo directing federal agencies to jumpstart an all-hands-on-deck approach to migrating to quantum-resistant technologies. The security memo, released alongside a plan to promote U.S. leadership in quantum computing, directs specific actions for agencies to take during what is being described as a laborious, multi-year process of migrating vulnerable computer systems to quantum-resistant cryptography. "Research shows that at some...

Cuprous oxide crystal. (University of St Andrews) One of the ways we can fully realize the potential of quantum computers is by basing them on both light and matter – this way, information can be stored and processed, but also travel at the speed of light. Scientists have just taken a step closer to this goal, by successfully producing the largest hybrid particles of light and matter ever created. These quasiparticles, known as Rydberg polaritons, were made with the help of a piece of stone containing cuprous oxide (Cu2O) crystals from an ancient deposit in Namibia, one of the few...

Two teams of researchers working independently have shown the viability of using neutral atoms to create quantum circuits—both have published outlines of their work in the journal Nature. One of the groups, with members from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, ColdQuanta and Riverlane, successfully ran an algorithm on a cold atom quantum computer for the first time. The second group, with members from Harvard, MIT, QuEra Computing Inc., the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, showed that it was possible to build a quantum processor based on coherent transport of entangled atom arrays. Hannah Williams, with Durham...

Eureka! A research team featuring dozens of scientists working in partnership with Google‘s quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer. This is the kind of news that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. These scientists may have produced an entirely new phase of matter. I’m going to do my best to explain what that means and why I personally believe this is the most important scientific breakthrough in our lifetimes. However, for the sake of clarity, there’s two points I need to make first: 1. Time crystals...

Big Blue has now released Qiskit Runtime, which enables a significant acceleration of quantum calculations carried out over the cloud.Using a combination of tweaked algorithms, improved control systems and a new quantum service called Qiskit Runtime, IBM researchers have managed to resolve a quantum problem 120 times faster than the previous time they gave it a go. The simulation was run entirely on the cloud, through IBM's Qiskit platform – an open-source library of tools that lets developers around the world create quantum programs and run them on prototype quantum devices that IBM makes available over the cloud. The speed-up...

A Microsoft-led team has withdrawn a controversial research paper into quantum computing, published in 2018. The research claimed to have found evidence of an elusive subatomic particle Microsoft suggested could help the development of more powerful computers. But it now says mistakes were made. The journal Nature has published a retraction. And the paper's authors have apologised for "insufficient scientific rigour". But the company has said it remains confident of its wider efforts on quantum computing. The paper had been hailed as a breakthrough. But some scientists remained sceptical. Quantum computing has been seen as a potentially revolutionary leap forward,...