Microsoft says it has created a new state of matter to power quantum computers - one that’s neither liquid, solid nor gas. It’s the latest major announcement in the race to achieve a new level of computing power, one that’s exponentially faster by several magnitudes than traditional computers. This historic achievement will transform the development of new drug treatments, data encryption and artificial intelligence. How is Microsoft advancing the science of quantum computing? Chetan Nayak, a technical fellow in quantum hardware at Microsoft and co-author of the study that first presented Microsoft’s research in the scientific journal Nature, joins The Excerpt to talk about both the science and the progress. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to [email protected] Transcript available hereAlso available at art19.com/shows/5-ThingsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the dream of quantum computing?
Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, April 9, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Microsoft says it created a new state of matter to power quantum computers, one that's neither liquid, solid, nor gas.
It's the latest major announcement in the race to achieve a new level of computing power, one that's exponentially faster by several magnitudes than traditional computers, transforming drug discovery, data encryption, and artificial intelligence. In short, helping humanity solve its most difficult scientific and environmental problems.
How is this project advancing the science of quantum computing? To dive into the science and progress, we're now joined by Chetan Nayak, a technical fellow in quantum hardware at Microsoft and co-author of the study that first presented Microsoft's research in the scientific journal Nature. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Let's start with the basics here.
Chapter 2: How is quantum computing different from classical computing?
First, what is quantum computing?
It's a great question because oftentimes people think that quantum computers are just a faster version of classical computers that are sped up by orders of magnitude, as you said. But actually, they're really a very different computing paradigm. In short, what a quantum computer aims to do
is to take advantage of the underlying laws of nature, which are quantum mechanics, so that you can have what's called a qubit, replacing the basic unit of information in a class computer as a bit. It's a zero or a one. A qubit, on the other hand, like Schrodinger's cat, which could be both dead and alive at the same time, a qubit can actually be both zero and one, in a quantum superposition.
So a quantum computer takes advantage of that basic fact of nature, which although that's true of everything around us, we have the luxury of kind of forgetting about that or ignoring that as we go around our daily life. This computer screen in front of me is not both here and somewhere else, it's only here. And that's because as objects get larger, their quantum effects tend to get suppressed.
But as things get small, they actually, their quantum effects tend to get accentuated. And as Moore's Law has progressed over the last decades, the transistors on chips and the density of elements on processors has gotten so high and the transistors have gotten so small that they are getting really close to that world where quantum effects become important.
You could view that as potentially a disaster because you want your information to be a zero or a one. You don't want it to be both zero and one sometimes.
But it turns out it's also an opportunity because there are certain problems which are really difficult to solve ordinarily that a quantum computer, if we can build one of a large enough scale and stability, would be able to do relatively easily.
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Chapter 3: What does the new state of matter mean for quantum computing?
I mentioned a new form of matter, which, of course, is huge scientific news for people who aren't scientists and maybe even for some who are. What does this mean?
Well, as you said correctly, solids, liquids and gases are different states of matter. And as you continuously change, for instance, the temperature in a solid like ice, its properties change continuously. You know, you warm it up a little bit, its density changes a little bit. But then you get to the transition point.
And at that transition point, a small change in temperature leads to a huge change in its properties. And it becomes water at the melting point. And then again, at the boiling point, it becomes steam. So there are clear distinctions between the solid ice and the liquid water. There are, as it turns out, there are actually finer classifications of solids.
For instance, some solids are magnetic, some solids are non-magnetic, some solids are metallic, others are insulating, some are actually superconducting, you know, which is a remarkable phenomenon that occurs when you cool down metals. They tend to actually become better metals and better conductors as we make them colder.
But then actually there's a very special point, the critical temperature, and below that temperature, it just falls off a cliff and goes to zero. And below that temperature, the resistance is just zero. That's a superconducting state. So that's a really cool state of matter discovered early in the 20th century.
There are some unusual physical conditions required for the quantum computing prototype you're building.
What are they? The actual device is based on an interesting combination of materials. It involves a semiconductor and a superconductor, but that alone isn't enough to get this state of matter or to make the qubits that we build on it. We cool this device down to extremely low temperatures, and that's the temperature which everything stops moving and there's no energy whatsoever in a system.
And our devices are 50 millikelvins, so 50 thousandths or 0.05 kelvin which means 0.05 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. Not the freezing point, but absolute zero, which itself is minus 273 degrees Celsius. So basically, this is really, really, really cold. And the reason is because we need to keep these qubits extremely stable, and they are more stable when they're colder.
So the fluctuations and noise that might disrupt these qubits are strongly suppressed when they're colder. The second thing that we have to do is we actually have to apply a pretty big magnetic field. So this is the kind of field where when people go into our labs, even standing outside of the fridge and outside the magnets, you have to be a little careful if you have a pacemaker, for instance.
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Chapter 4: What unusual conditions are required for quantum computing?
This is the longest running R&D program in Microsoft's history. So I'm coming up on my 20th anniversary with the company and I've seen this program grow from a very, you know, for the first 10 years it was a really small pilot project with just a handful of people. mostly trying to figure out if there was anything real here to quantum computing and worth the company pursuing in a big way.
We've grown over the last 10 years and especially over the last five into the kind of team that can do the science and engineering that I think is necessary to build a machine like this. Over time, we have made a number of pivots as we learn new things.
And I think as much as we like the ideas that we've developed, we certainly have the humility to realize that other people have great ideas too, and we shouldn't fall in love entirely with our own ideas. And we also learn sometimes that Something we thought was correct wasn't correct, or something that we thought would be easy turned out to be hard, and sometimes the reverse.
So there are all kinds of lessons that we have ended up learning over the last 20 years, and I'm sure we'll learn more as we go forward.
How have you and your team weighed ethical concerns regarding how quantum technology may be used?
It's really interesting because as these technologies develop, I think usually, or if I look historically at examples, the scientists who built the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project were very aware of the ethical concerns and were some of the earliest people to think about the ethics of nuclear disarmament, for instance, or strategies thereof.
And you can see AI researchers, even five to 10 years ago, were thinking very hard about the ethical issues. That's very much true in quantum computing as well.
In fact, it turns out that one of the things that really caused a big uptick in interest in quantum computing was Peter Shor's discovery of the algorithm that's named after him, Shor's algorithm, in which he showed that quantum computers could break the most popular crypto system that we currently use if the computer were large enough, a large enough scale and stable enough.
That actually took quantum computing, made it very interesting to people other than scientists. you know, and engineers. But what's interesting is that quantum physicists had also been thinking about very safe encryption methods and very safe ways of exchanging messages, also by taking advantage of quantum mechanics, what's sometimes called quantum communication, and
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Chapter 5: How close are we to practical quantum computers?
Some scientists who reviewed your paper were cited in the Wall Street Journal as saying you didn't present, quote, conclusive evidence, unquote, that you'd achieved the results that you claimed you did. How do you respond to that?
Well, first of all, I think skepticism is healthy and normal in science. Scientists aren't a monolith. They don't all circle the wagons and all say the same thing. My experience is that it's always the opposite, that any new result is met with a lot of questions. Healthy skepticism, especially when you do something that's not incremental, that's a big leap.
There's going to be skepticism and questions. We did just publish a paper in Nature, as you mentioned, presenting some of our results. That's a peer-reviewed journal that in turn built on work. So I think this is kind of a natural part of science. We feel really good about our results.
We have, of course, shared a lot more with DARPA because of the ability to, under a nondisclosure agreement, work with the U.S. government on them actually coming into our labs and measuring some of our devices and
And so that is a really great opportunity for us because, you know, some of the mystery about our program is because, of course, we are building a proprietary technology and we cannot share every detail of what we've done or how we do it, as is normal for companies. But, you know, with the U.S. government, we can share a lot of that information.
So that's a great ability for us to get that kind of external vetting.
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Chapter 6: How has Microsoft's quantum computing journey evolved?
There's obviously a ton of competition out there regarding quantum computing. Google just rolled out its new qubit. Now Amazon is in the race, too, with oscillate. How is Microsoft's qubit different? And what's next for you and your team?
Yeah, first of all, you're right. It is a really exciting time in quantum computing. There's a lot of energy in the field. A lot of progress has been made, you know, I would say in the last couple of years. So it's really exciting, and I think that feeds into what I said about really useful and impactful quantum computers being years, not decades away.
With all these different companies, including very big companies, really racing towards the same goal, I think the competition is one of those ties that lifts all boats. So I think it's a really exciting time for quantum computing.
And then what's next for you and your team?
We published a roadmap that explains the part of our roadmap that we can share that is sort of more scientific and doesn't reveal too many of the details that are trade secrets. It's a part of what we worked on with DARPA. It's a roadmap of delivery for them. So for us, it's the next step on that roadmap towards computers that are of the scale.
So it's going to be devices of greater complexity that have more capabilities. as well as improving the stability of the underlying qubits. Those are kind of the two axes along which we, you know, most of our development is occurring and we're marching ahead on both of them. We would love to have, you know, catalysts that can enable us to do that.
We'd love to have catalysts that can break down microplastics. You know, solving chemistry and materials problems maybe doesn't sound, it sounds like a niche thing. You know, it's not the same as, it isn't going to be just like a better Excel spreadsheet or a better version of Microsoft Word or a better browser. On the other hand, 96% of all manufactured goods rely on chemistry materials.
So it's the kind of thing that could impact us all around. Even people who never see a quantum computer, never touch a quantum computer, their lives could be impacted by the materials and chemistry that we could discover with a quantum computer.
My big takeaway is that this is coming within years, not decades. Chayton, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
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