Science

Could a new approach help make quantum computers error-free?Nord Quantique A Canadian quantum computing start-up claims its new qubit will enable much smaller and cheaper error-free quantum computers. But getting there will be a steep challenge. To correct its own errors, a traditional computer saves duplicates of information in multiple places, a practice called redundancy. For quantum computers to achieve their own version of redundancy, they typically require many additional quantum bits, or qubits – hundreds of thousands of them. Now, Julien Camirand Lemyre at Nord Quantique and his colleagues have created a qubit that they say will let them slash that number to mere hundreds. “The basic underlying idea behind our hardware is… having qubits that have intrinsic redu...

Kaliane Bradley’s protagonist is given some unexpected news in The Ministry of Timeandrey_l/Shutterstock The interviewer said my name, which made my thoughts clip. I don’t say my name, not even in my head. She’d said it correctly, which people generally don’t. “I’m Adela,” she said. She had an eye-patch and blonde hair the same colour and texture as hay. “I’m the Vice-Secretary.” “Of . . . ?” “Have a seat.” This was my sixth round of interviews. The job I was inter­viewing for was an internal posting. It had been marked “Security Clearance Required” because it was gauche to use the Top Secret stamps on paperwork with salary bands. I’d never been cleared to this security level, hence why no one would tell me what the job was. As it paid almost triple my current salary, ...

An old dense spruce forest in Holma, Sweden. Credit: W.carter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Last month, Amanda Biscoe and Pamela Treviño hosted TreeTalks, a film screening and panel discussion focused on rainforest conservation and the role of young people in shaping its future. Through their work as co-directors of Gen Z for the Trees, a program within the Rainforest Partnership, Biscoe and Treviño created the event to bridge generational gaps in conservation and build hope amid growing climate anxiety. Both Biscoe and Treviño are students in the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy (MPA-ESP) program, which is offered by Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in partnership with the Columbia Climate School. They opened the evening with two...

US President Donald Trump (left), accompanied by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (right), announces the Golden Dome missile defense shieldCHRIS KLEPONIS/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock US President Donald Trump has proposed a defence project, called the Golden Dome, to intercept any incoming hypersonic, ballistic and advanced cruise missiles that threaten the country. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space,” said Trump during the White House announcement on 20 May. But such a thorough interception system may not be possible. Some experts also warn that, even if it works, the Golden Dome would take at least a decade to build, cost mo...

One of the quietest places in the universe is an unremarkable room on the southern coast of the UK. Here, in one of the University of Southampton’s physics labs, overseen by Hendrik Ulbricht, a preposterous amount of effort has gone into eliminating every conceivable disturbance: a 1-tonne slab of granite absorbs all vibrations aside from the faintest tremors, while a pendulum repurposed from a gravitational wave observatory catches the last leftover wobbles and a fridge lowers temperatures to within a whisker of those in the deepest reaches of outer space. All of this is done in the slim hope we might answer a question that has plagued scientists since the advent of quantum mechanics a century ago. In the microscopic quantum realm, reality seems to work differently t...