Efforts to find Majorana particles may finally lead to reliable quantum computers

The Majorana 1 chip may provide quantum computing using geometry-based qubits

Traditional quantum computers are incredibly fragile, with encoded information easily disrupted and requiring significant error correction systems. Microsoft’s approach involves storing data on a surface, which is more stable, but involves an elusive particle first theorized in 1938.

Quantum computers harness weird physics to explore unsolvable problems

Classical computers manipulate bits as either 0 or 1, but quantum computers use qubits to hold combinations of both, enabling new algorithms. This new approach could one day help with breakthroughs in medicine, chemistry, and AI.

Noise and instability made quantum computing seem out of reach for decades

Recent advances in error suppression, mitigation, and correction are allowing quantum computers to perform practical tasks that challenge classical machines. IBM’s 2016 launch of its first cloud-accessible quantum computer attracted over 22,000 users in its first month alone.

Quantum computers can simulate nature more effectively than classical computers

Ordinary computers struggle to simulate quantum fields due to entanglement, but systems built from those elements can model the complexity. Systems using particle in more than two states—qudits—have successfully modeled 2D electromagnetic fields and done so more efficiently.

Superconducting qubits have become foundational to today’s quantum computing efforts

Relying on electrons experiencing no friction across metal, these qubits require extremely low temperatures and behave like artificial atoms. The first superconducting qubit, invented in 1999, was large enough to be seen with the naked eye.

Solid neon mirrors help trap single electrons to create stable quantum bits

Researchers created this new unit of information for a quantum computer by trapping a single electron near the surface of solid neon. The electron was held in its quantum state by attraction to its mirror image.

Google chose Santa Barbara to host its Quantum AI computing project

The project seeks to reduce errors within its quantum computer and integrate 1 million physical qubits (or quantum bits) into the room-sized computer. This powerful device will attempt to solve complex problems in medicine, computing, and more.

Quantum computers use qubits to solve problems much faster than classical machines

Unlike regular computers, where each bit is either 0 or 1, quantum computers use qubits, which can simultaneously be both—allowing for massive parallel processing power. Google’s quantum processor once solved a problem in seconds that would have taken a supercomputer 47 years.

Cooling silica nanoparticles lets physicists push the boundary of how large an object can still behave quantum mechanically.

Misunderstandings about how quantum computing works may have overhyped their ability

Quantum computers are often viewed as machines that can solve all problems instantly by trying every solution simultaneously. Instead, they amplify correct answers and cancel out wrong ones, which only works for specific kinds of problems with special structures.

Qubits let quantum computers process massive datasets all at once

The quantum phenomena of superposition and entanglement enable qubits to act in 0 and 1 binary states simultaneously and influence each other instantly. These features give quantum computers incredible power, though keeping them stable is a major challenge.

One of five competing qubit technologies may usher in the quantum computing era

No winning qubit technology exists among photonic networks, superconducting circuits, spin qubits, neutral atoms, and trapped ions. Each has significant limitations and unique advantages, such as neutral-atom systems' ability to maintain quantum states for several minutes, far longer than the others.

Google’s quantum computer completes a 10,000-year task in about 3 minutes

Google used its 53-qubit processor on an extremely difficult problem for traditional computers to simulate to showcase quantum supremacy. IBM later challenged Google’s claim by arguing that its Summit supercomputer could solve the same problem in just 2.5 days using a more efficient method.

Transistors in traditional computers are physically limited to atomic scales

As computer parts shrink, transistors—tiny switches that control the path of electrical signals—become obsolete because electrons can quantum tunnel through switch barriers. This makes quantum computers, which take advantage of quantum effects, an enticing alternative.

Emergent quantum phenomena can produce nonfundamental quasiparticles

While physicists have discovered new particles by colliding known ones at high speeds, placing known particles in extreme environments or configurations can allow quantum mechanics to produce bizarre behaviors, making them seem like new types of matter.

Dilution fridges create the colder-than-space environments needed for quantum computers by successively lowering temperatures across layers plated with gold, which reduces heat transfer via radiation and gives them a chandelier-like appearance.

How quantum computers can empower Shor's algorithm to break digital encryption

Secure communications largely rely on numeric keys generated by multiplying two enormous prime numbers together, and it is computationally impractical to determine these primes by trying to divide by every possible one. While Shor's algorithm can provide better guesses for this brute-force approach, it relies on a number that is difficult to determine on classical computers but much easier to calculate using the simultaneous computations enabled by quantum superposition.

The mathematics of quantum-based cryptography, and why existing data is already at risk

Seeing the potential of this technology, some governments and malicious actors are thought to have already started storing encrypted data, in the hopes that quantum computers within the next 10 to 20 years will be able to decrypt it. As of 2022, the National Institute of Standards and Technology had selected four algorithms for inclusion in a quantum-resistant encryption standard.

Lasers, semiconductors, medical imaging, and atomic clocks rely on quantum mechanics

Semiconductors, crucial in electronics, operate based on quantum superposition. Lasers use stimulated emission, a quantum process, and MRI machines leverage the quantum spin of hydrogen atoms for imaging. Atomic clocks measure time with unprecedented precision using quantum transitions.

In 2026, researchers successfully transported antimatter in a truck using a portable trap that employed electromagnetic fields to hold 92 antiprotons.

IBM developed a benchmark to measure the usable performance of a quantum computer

Dubbed "quantum volume," the benchmark tests how well a quantum computer runs complex tasks. It stops when the computer can no longer correctly select the most likely answers, called "heavy outputs," more than two-thirds of the time.

At CERN's Antimatter Factory, researchers create and guide antiprotons and antielectrons together to form antihydrogen, and all these antiparticles are analyzed to help scientists study the behavior of antimatter.

Quantum tunneling allows particles to pass through classically impenetrable barriers

First described in 1928, the phenomenon is the result of probability waves, which represent the location of particles in space as extended objects. Just as sound waves can reflect off of and pass through barriers, these probability waves dictate that solid matter has a chance at passing through obstacles.

Antimatter was predicted to exist four years before it was observed, though the mathematics responsible for the prediction described it as matter with negative energy.

Scientists are experimenting with ways to probe the multiverse theory

Researchers are simulating vacuum bubbles—the theorized starting points of universes—using quantum computers, digital models, and exotic lab setups to study how they form, expand, and possibly collide. One experiment aims to "blow" artificial universe-like bubbles inside ultra-cold quantum gases, potentially capturing real-time glimpses of cosmic birth processes in a lab.

How entanglement lies at the heart of quantum computing

Theoretical physicist and mathematician Frank Wilczek boils down the complex notion of quantum entanglement into this reasonably understandable summary. Wilczek discusses the concepts of quantum entanglement and how it relates to other ideas like the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. What sounds a bit "science-fictiony" can have actual real-world and concrete applications.

Measurements of an electron’s magnetic moment help test the Standard Model

A particle’s magnetic moment quantifies how it responds to the presence of an external magnetic field. An electron’s value can be measured down to 14 decimal places, with certainties in the first 12 allowing it to be used to assess the accuracy of predictive models.

Fermilab's ICARUS experiment is searching for hypothetical sterile neutrinos

Neutrinos are a group of three chargeless, lightweight particles that can transform into one another via a quantum mechanical phenomenon called neutrino oscillations. The rate of these oscillations can be determined by measuring the amount of each type at different distances, where data inconsistencies would suggest the existence of new physics.

Quantum field theory, which has made predictions accurate to 12 decimal places, explained

Instead of being made of indivisible particles, all visible matter in the universe is built from underlying quantum fields—smooth, invisible entities that behave like waves and extend throughout space and time. The theory suggests these fields are fundamental, and particles are disturbances that move through them.

The graviton may be the last missing piece of the Standard Model

While the electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces can be explained through interactions with particles, gravity is instead best modeled through spacetime curvature. Discovering a quantum particle of gravity would unite the two pillars of modern physics—quantum mechanics and general relativity—toward developing a theory of everything.

IBM Quantum’s dilution refrigerators keep quantum processors colder than space

In IBM’s quantum lab, quantum processors are kept at a temperature of 15 millikelvin using dilution refrigerators. These refrigerators use nested thermal layers, cryogens like liquid nitrogen and helium, and powerful compressors to maintain the ultra-cold temperatures required for qubit stability and performance.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second.

One of Einstein's papers challenged quantum theory but helped confirm entanglement

In 1935, Einstein suggested that quantum mechanics was incomplete due to its strange implications about entangled particles. Their challenge led to decades of experiments that eventually proved distant particles could affect each other instantly.

The hypothetical matter that neutron stars' cores may contain, including strange quarks

Models of the extreme pressures and energies in neutron stars suggest conditions resembling those believed to have existed within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In these environments, the quarks that make up protons and neutrons in trios may instead form pairs that combine to form one quantum object. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Watch how the machine at the heart of NASA's Cold Atom Lab produces atoms near absolute zero—the coldest theoretical temperature in the universe—for experiments involving quantum phenomena.

A beam of neutrinos can be created by firing a beam of high-energy protons at a target to produce unstable particles that decay into neutrinos.

As of 2023, the world's smallest particle accelerator is smaller than a penny

The prototype is an example of a photonic accelerator, which utilizes tiny lasers to accelerate electrons rather than relying on oscillating electromagnetic fields to move them. It can deliver about 1 electron per second with energies equivalent to those found in cathode-ray tube televisions.

Electricity can flow indefinitely along a ring of superconducting material, which provides zero resistance to the movement of charges due to quantum effects.

Explore an optical table to create quantum physics experiments

This interactive teaches users to create quantum experiments through lessons resembling video game levels. Users can also use the virtual lab to visualize landmark quantum experiments like entanglement, teleportation, cryptography, and quantum computing, or create their own experiments with drag-and-drop elements.

Why quantum mechanics keeps gravity from collapsing neutron stars into black holes

According to the Pauli exclusion principle, certain particles, such as neutrons, are forbidden from occupying identical states within a system. Like tennis balls tightly packed together, neutrons exert a resistive pressure against this compression—neutron degeneracy pressure—which can help prevent gravitational collapse. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Quantum superposition makes Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive until observed

Erwin Schrödinger's famous cat thought experiment illustrates how quantum objects can exist simultaneously in multiple states. This superposition allows electrons to behave as particles and waves, enabling chemical bonds and the function of modern electronics.

Quantum mechanics-based technology may explain the Fermi paradox

It describes the discrepancy between the high likelihood of life beyond Earth given the vastness of the universe and the lack of evidence for such life, since extraterrestrial civilizations have not communicated with us. However, quantum communication—a more information-dense and effective method than classical means—requires massive receivers and very narrow signals, which would easily miss Earth, making a lack of signals expected.

Quantum mechanical principles are responsible for chemical properties

Besides quantization, the wave-particle duality, and probabilistic features, quantum theory's mathematics introduces the exclusion principle, quantum tunneling, quantum entanglement, and other phenomena foreign to our everyday experiences. Some suggest that all possibilities for a quantum system may also occur across the multiverse.

How string theory explains gravity on the quantum scale, but may be untestable

Combining the general theory of relativity with quantum field theory creates nonsensical mathematical outcomes, such as probabilities of infinity. These are resolved by treating particles as vibrating strings rather than points of matter. However, probing the scale of these strings to validate the theory requires technology equivalent to a particle accelerator the size of the solar system.

Explore a visual guide to how quantum computers can crack RSA encryption

In 1994, Peter Shor introduced an algorithm that showed a quantum computer could efficiently factor the product of two very large prime numbers, undermining the mathematics that makes RSA so secure. While using larger keys can delay the decryption time of quantum computers, this solution increases the time it takes to encrypt data, which may become impractical.

As of 2026, 75 of the 86 particles discovered by the Large Hadron Collider have been found by the LHCb experiment—a detector that explores the decay of particles made of beauty and charm quarks.

Quantum mechanics explains how particles behave like both matter and waves

In the quantum world, particles such as electrons are “quantized,” meaning they can only hold specific values of energy or momentum. These particles also behave like waves, with their wave function predicting where they might be found at any moment as probability clouds called orbitals.

Particle interactions follow rules related to specific quantum properties

Like a business whose purchased inventory matches sold inventory, physicists identified specific patterns across decades of particle accelerator data, which became new conservation laws for elementary particles. These laws help identify which particle decays are expected or forbidden.

At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have transformed lead into gold—a process known as chrysopoeia, which alchemists sought for centuries.

Quantum field theory reveals that particles are ripples in universal fields

Instead of being made of indivisible particles, all visible matter in the universe is built from underlying quantum fields—smooth, invisible entities that behave like waves. The theory suggests these fields are fundamental, and particles are disturbances that move through them.