Nobel laureate says hell build world’s most powerfu...

What’s Happening

So basically John Martinis has already revolutionised quantum computing twice.

Now, he is working on another radical rethink of the technology that could deliver machines with unrivalled capabilities Technology Nobel laureate says he’ll build world’s most powerful quantum computer John Martinis has already revolutionised quantum computing twice. He prefers the nitty-gritty of doing physics in the lab over the idealised world of textbooks. (we’re not making this up)

But you couldnt write the quantum computing history books without him: he was central to two of the most pivotal moments in the field.

The Details

And he is hard at work chasing the next one. It kicked off in the 1980s, when Martinis and his colleagues ran a series of experiments to probe the edges of what was known about quantum effects – for this work, he clutched a Nobel prize last year .

Back when he was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, we knew that subatomic particles were subject to quantum effects, but the question was whether the world of quantum mechanics could extend to larger scales . Martinis and his colleagues built and studied circuits made from a mix of superconductors and insulators where, it turned out, many charged particles within the circuit behaved as if they were a single quantum particle.

Why This Matters

This was macroscopic quantumness, and it laid the foundation for building some of today’s most powerful quantum computers, including those rn championed Google. In fact, Martinis’s work set in motion the trend of tech giants using quantum bits, or qubits, made from superconducting circuits – the most widely used qubits in the world today. Quantum computers have finally arrived, but will they ever be useful?

This could have implications for future research in this area.

The Bottom Line

Quantum computers have finally arrived, but will they ever be useful? The second time Martinis shook up the field, he was leading the team of Google researchers who built the quantum computer that achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time .

Are you here for this or nah?