Quantum Everything
Quantum Everything
The word “quantum” can cause shrugs in even highly educated shoulders, but with a “discrete quantity” of knowledge, quantum physics, and the technologies based on it, can be illuminated for everyone.
Let’s start with the theory
There once was a classical theory
Of which quantum disciples were leery.
They said, “Why spend so long
On a theory that’s wrong?”
Well, it works for your everyday query!
In science’s ongoing effort to describe everything, there have always been small, troublesome gaps.
There is classical mechanics
It describes so much of our everyday world, but can’t always accurately describe the very big or the very small.
There are the theories of relativity
They describe so much about the universe, from gravity to time, but can’t always accurately describe the smallest scales.
There is quantum mechanics
It describes the atomic and subatomic scales, like photons and electrons, but begins to raise philosophical problems at the human scale.
The short answer
What is quantum physics?
Students and faculty from across Harvard explain the basics of quantum physics and why it’s so important.
Learn about Harvard’s Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics course
The long answer
How does it work (and not work)?
“Quantum physics works phenomenally well. By almost any measure it is the most successful scientific theory of all time … but, there is a problem,” says science reporter and astrophysicist Adam Becker.
But Neils Bohr, what is it good for?
Nobel Prize winning quantum thought leader Neils Bohr could not have imagined the amazing applications that quantum physics is making possible.
A nano-optic endoscope that uses a metalens could play a major role in lung cancer diagnosis.
Better lenses
Lenses and filters are created using techniques that—while refined—have been largely unchanged for centuries.
Metalenses manipulate light at the microscopic level, offering compactness and new functionality that isn’t possible with traditional lenses and filters.
Better credit cards
Researchers created a material that can do many of the things a magnetic strip can do, but without the need for the often-fragile magnetic force.
Better diagnostics
A process used to find and identify small molecules in biological samples such as blood and urine can struggle to identify molecules that haven’t been catalogued already—the vast majority of them.
So medical researchers and quantum scientists collaborated on a new algorithm for this process that draws from both quantum computing and classical machine learning.
Learn more about the work of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Better computers
Imagine an un-hackable communications system that could make data breaches a thing of the past. Quantum computing will usher in game-changing innovations in health care, infrastructure, security, drug development, climate-change prediction, machine learning, financial services, and more.
We’ve helped advance quantum science a bit
A qubit to be more specific. The quantum bit is the fundamental unit for quantum computing, and is encoded in a physical system, like the spin of an electron or an atom’s energy state.
Each qubit increases the complexity of problem the computer can solve exponentially. So, while something like the 16-bit Super Nintendo was twice as powerful as the 8-bit NES, a 51-qubit computer can solve problems 200 trillion times more complicated than a 3-qubit computer.
Making quantum computers a commercial reality
Can a startup take quantum computers from the lab to the world?
Fun with physics
Learn quantum sign language
A collaboration between the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials and The Learning Center for the Deaf is developing quantum-related topics in American Sign Language.
Get entangled in a Harvard classroom
Explore our recorded lectures and talks on the world of quantum science.
Learn about our Ph.D. program in Quantum Science and Engineering
The world of quantum materials
Making sense of the quantum revolution
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