Microsoft presented Majorana 1, a quantum chip based on particles theorized by the physicist Ettore Majorana in the early 1900s. Majorana 1 should begin to bring quantum technology within real applications.
Ettore Majorana was born atbeginning of the last century. It was a physique, one of the brighter minds of his generationdisappeared in circumstances never clarified when he had 31 years. Today almost 120 years since its birth There is a chip dedicated to him and his theories. And not an ordinary chip but a quantum processorthe last frontier in the PC search.
The Majorana 1 It was presented by Microsoft. It is not a product that we could buy with two clicks on Amazon. It is a quantum chip and is based on a new material. Before tackling the theme, let’s start from a point. There Research on quantum PCs It has been active for some time. We are talking about machines that do not exploit the components that are on the market but take advantage of the quantum properties of the matter to carry out huge piers of calculations.
If the bits are the minimum unit behind the calculation capacity of our PCs, in quantum PCs we talk about quibitunits that are able to have more values at the same time. In this context, Majorana 1 is important because it is one of the first chips which could bring the technology of quantum computers within different applications. Scientific research behind this chip have been published in Nature.
How this man will collect a billion dollars without doing anything
The role of topological superconductors
As Microsoft explains, in this quantum chip there are the results of the Research on topological superconductorsa “class of materials capable of reaching a state of the material never observed before, nor solid, nor liquid, nor gaseous”. A state that is precisely called “topological”.
Here we come to the choice of the name. In fact, the chip is based on particles that, explains the magazine The Verge, had been theoretical discovered by the physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937. As Microsoft writes are particles that in certain conditions are able to “store quantum information in a protected way” .
Zulfi Alamvice -president of the quantum project in Microsoft, explained that this chip is the result of Longer search program ever faced by Microsoft: “We have been working on this program for 17 years. Now we can define the next phase of the quantum journey “.
