Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded for Work in Quantum Mechanics 18
The New York Times: John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday in Sweden for showing that two properties of quantum mechanics, the physical laws that rule the subatomic realm, could be observed on a system large enough to see with the naked eye. They will share a prize of 11 million Swedish kroner, or around $1.17 million.
"There is no advanced technology today that does not rely on quantum mechanics," Olle Eriksson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said during the announcement of the award. The laureates' discoveries, he added, paved the way for technologies like the cellphone, cameras and fiber optic cables.
It also helped lay the groundwork for current attempts to build a quantum computer, a device that could compute and process information at speeds that would not be possible with classical computer. Martinis worked at Google from 2014 to 2020 to build a quantum computer and led the quantum supremacy experiment in 2019. Devoret is cited in Google's recent breakthrough where its Willow quantum chip solved a problem in five minutes that the world's most advanced supercomputer could never solve.
The three laureates conducted experiments with electrical circuits that demonstrated quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in systems large enough to hold in the hand. Clarke is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Devoret joined his research group in the 1980s and is now at Yale University and UC Santa Barbara. Martinis also joined the group in the 1980s and is currently at UC Santa Barbara and co-founded Qolab, a startup developing utility-scale superconducting quantum computers.
"There is no advanced technology today that does not rely on quantum mechanics," Olle Eriksson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said during the announcement of the award. The laureates' discoveries, he added, paved the way for technologies like the cellphone, cameras and fiber optic cables.
It also helped lay the groundwork for current attempts to build a quantum computer, a device that could compute and process information at speeds that would not be possible with classical computer. Martinis worked at Google from 2014 to 2020 to build a quantum computer and led the quantum supremacy experiment in 2019. Devoret is cited in Google's recent breakthrough where its Willow quantum chip solved a problem in five minutes that the world's most advanced supercomputer could never solve.
The three laureates conducted experiments with electrical circuits that demonstrated quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in systems large enough to hold in the hand. Clarke is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Devoret joined his research group in the 1980s and is now at Yale University and UC Santa Barbara. Martinis also joined the group in the 1980s and is currently at UC Santa Barbara and co-founded Qolab, a startup developing utility-scale superconducting quantum computers.
Cool, but .. (Score:1)
The three laureates conducted experiments with electrical circuits that demonstrated quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in systems large enough to hold in the hand.
... you can hold a tunnel diode in your hand. And you can even buy them at Radio Shack.
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The three laureates conducted experiments with electrical circuits that demonstrated quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in systems large enough to hold in the hand.
... you can hold a tunnel diode in your hand. And you can even buy them at Radio Shack.
So more science fraud in physics. Great.
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Where is the fraud?
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It's a joke about the fact that Radio Shack isn't around any more?
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Not the Same (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference here is that the size of the quantum system was, itself, macroscopic - the circuit that had quantized energy levels and showed tunnelling was macroscopic. This was a significant result although I struggle a bit to see it as being at the level of a Nobel prize but at least it's better than last year when they gave the physics prize to a computer scientist!
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This is why I still come to slashdot. Fan of your work.
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Translated from the Nobel Committee's press release: The transistors in computer microchips are an example of the established quantum technology we have around us. "This year's physics prize has contributed to the development of the next generation of quantum technology, which can give us tools such as quantum cryptography, quantum computers and quantum sensors." You can't get away from computers, can you? :)
As a wise man once said
"everything's computer"
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And its inventor won a Nobel prize. But most of the thing you're holding is a plastic case. The actual tunneling occurs on the atomic scale.
The prize this year went to a paper describing tunneling on a scale orders of magnitude larger and validating theoretical predictions for quantum mechanics at that large scale.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/p... [aps.org]
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Your tunneling diode uses individual electrons and holes.
The Nobel prize is for a system large enough to fit in your hand that has a single quantum state that can tunnel.
Superconductors are fun.
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That might have been a statement about transistors. The early development of transistors required understanding quantum mechanics. Without that understanding, the development of transistors wouldn't have proceeded far enough to replace vacuum tubes.
Quantum mechanics, not quantum computers (Score:4, Interesting)
"Martinis worked at Google from 2014 to 2020 to build a quantum computer and led the quantum supremacy experiment in 2019. Devoret is cited in Google's recent breakthrough where its Willow quantum chip solved a problem in five minutes that the world's most advanced supercomputer could never solve."
That little tidbit was not part of the Nobel Prize citation and was just throw in to the slashdot summary. It somewhat backhandedly implies that some part of the Nobel Prize was related to quantum computing, but that would not be correct. Quantum computing is still as controversial as it was before the Nobel Prize. Google's quantum computing work is still lauded by some and panned by others. It is still not clear whether quantum computing will do anything useful in our lifetimes.
You can see LEDs (Score:2)
Trade School (Score:3)
I keep telling people they should enroll in trade school, not university. Here's my vindication finally, three mechanics won the Nobel prize.