The first step is recognising that the UK is not trying to win the semiconductor race on every front. It can't, and it shouldn't. Instead, the country has embraced a niche strategy, focusing on areas where it can lead the world. Crucially, these are the parts of the value chain that create the most intellectual property and the highest margins. It is a strategy grounded in realism, but also one that demands urgency and coordination.
The UK Government has announced more than £14 million in new funding to accelerate the commercial use of quantum technology across healthcare, defence, transport and energy, in a move it says will help power Britain's next industrial revolution. The investment, unveiled on Friday at the National Quantum Technologies Showcase in London, marks a major milestone in the country's National Quantum Technologies Programme - part of its wider plan to translate cutting-edge science into real-world applications that drive economic growth.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for work on quantum mechanic tunnelling. The award, announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, will be presented to the trio in December for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.
John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research into quantum mechanical tunneling. Clarke conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley; Martinis at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Devoret at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life," Clarke told reporters at the announcement by phone after being told of his win.
...the textbook formulation of quantum mechanics has a 'measurement problem' - an unmanageable emphasis on the role of observers and their observations that makes it impossible to even begin to answer questions about the theory's connection to the structure of reality.
