In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we explore Microsoft’s new hardware paradigm for quantum computing, how we could prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth, why you should consider eating more grapes and more. You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here.
Microsoft
This week, Microsoft unveiled Majorana 1, a chip that uses a new kind of quantum computing architecture. The company has been working for decades on this technology, which has the potential to revolutionize computing by quickly being able to solve problems that would take conventional computers years. Microsoft’s researchers published their findings in Nature.
If these results hold up, this chip could help solve one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing. That problem is that the connections between “quantum bits” or qubits for short, are extremely fragile, which leads to computational errors. These errors are typically corrected on the software level, but that slows the process down significantly.
Microsoft said that its new chip is based on what it calls a topological qubit, which was first theorized in the 1990s. In theory, connections between topological qubits are stronger on the physical level, meaning they produce fewer errors to correct (the tradeoff is that it makes quantum information harder to measure, which is why it’s taken decades to build one). Microsoft said in its announcement that with this success, the company will “realize quantum computers capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.”
Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in a blog post discussing Microsoft’s announcement that it may be too early to tell yet how impactful Microsoft’s discovery will be, noting that topological qubits are right now where other quantum computing efforts were about 20 years ago.
“Topological qubits can win if, and only if, they turn out to be so much more reliable that they leapfrog the earlier approaches—sort of like the transistor did to the vacuum tube and electromechanical relay,” he wrote. “Whether that will happen is still an open question, to put it extremely mildly.”
Stay tuned.
Can We Stop This Asteroid From Hitting Earth?
This section of Siberia was struck by falling meteor pieces on July 30, 1908 in what was called the Tunguska event, likely caused by an asteroid about the size of 2024 YR4
Bettmann Archive
New observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 (which really needs a catchier name at this point) suggest some good news: it now only has about a 1 in 360 chance of hitting the Earth in 2032. At one point, the risk was judged to be as high as 3.1%. Right now the asteroid is believed to be between about 130 and 300 feet in diameter, so it’s not something that would destroy the planet if it hit– the most likely scenario is that it would blow up in the atmosphere. But it wouldn’t be a good thing for anyone nearby.
“It would essentially be like a nuclear weapon, without the radiation and fireball,” Robin George Andrews, author of How To Kill An Asteroid told me. His recent book dives into the science of defending the planet from asteroids. He said that if the 2024 YR4 is on the larger side, the explosion would be “capable of knocking over multi-story buildings several miles from the impact site.”
Right now the odds of the asteroid hitting Earth are still pretty small, and when it comes close enough to observe again, scientists are likely to determine it will miss.
But if the Earth is in its path, there are options. For example, two years ago, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, a small spacecraft which successfully collided into an asteroid about 530 feet to successfully change its orbit. It could potentially do the same to any asteroid approaching Earth, though Andrews noted that timing could be a challenge here.
“You need about 10 years to plan a proper deflection mission,” he told me. “Now, I’m sure, in an emergency, that might change, but the unintended consequences could be horrible” such as inadvertently breaking it up in such a way it does more damage than if it was left alone.
Another possibility for deflecting an asteroid, Andrews said, might be exploding a nuclear weapon near the asteroid to push it off course. “It would impart much more of an impulse to an asteroid [than a DART-style spacecraft],” he said. “There’s risks, and it could go wrong for all sorts of reasons, but if it was a genuine emergency I think this would come up in planning discussions.”
DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: A SOIL TREATMENT THAT SEQUESTERS CARBON
All over the world, farmers routinely add calcium carbonate and similar materials to soil to reduce its acidity and help crops grow. But new research shows that similar materials–calcium silicate and magnesium oxide–could provide the same function with an added bonus: at scale, they could potentially pull billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and crystallize it, offering a potential solution to climate change.
FINAL FRONTIER: CALLISTO MAY HAVE AN OCEAN
Jupiter’s moon Callisto may have a saltwater ocean beneath its surface. That’s the suggestion of a new analysis of data about the moon that was collected by the Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s. The team studied information about the moon’s magnetic fields from all eight of Galileo’s flybys, incorporating new statistical techniques to determine if its ionosophere–the electrically conductive part of its atmosphere–was enough to explain it. The team found that Callisto’s ionosphere alone couldn’t account for its magnetic properties, making it more likely an electrically conductive, salty liquid ocean must also be present.
BLACK HISTORY IN SCIENCE AND TECH
When I was a kid in school, I learned that Robert Peary was the first person to reach the North Pole in 1909. But I did not learn about the four Inuit members of his team who also reached the pole. Nor did I learn about Matthew Henson, a Black man from Baltimore who accompanied him on the journey and who built and maintained the wooden sledges the team traveled on to reach the North Pole. Henson was a lifelong explorer, traveling first on merchant ships at the age of 12 to ports around the world. He first met Peary in 1887, and the pair went on multiple expeditions together for over 20 years.
WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK
In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, my colleague Amy Feldman and I looked at a new biotech fund for startups hit by NIH cuts, a shift in bird flu strategy from the USDA, a new vaccine approval for invasive meningococcal disease, Nvidia’s latest AI model for life sciences and more.
SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS
Doctors may soon have another tool in their arsenal to combat Ebola epidemics: a newly-discovered antibody that can help block infection by the virus.
Researchers grew a synthetic diamond that’s harder than natural ones by heating and compressing graphite in such a way that the diamond is formed with a hexagonal lattice, rather than the cubic shape found in nature.
Quantum computing company D-wave is collaborating with computing consultancy Staque to develop hybrid quantum applications to optimize routing systems for autonomous tractors.
An early-stage clinical trial of an mRNA cancer vaccine found that it reduced the risk of recurrence of pancreatic cancer after surgery.
A new study revealed that the shape of the nucleus of an isotope of lead is not perfectly spherical, as previously thought, which may mean that current models of atomic nucleus structures need to be revised.
PRO SCIENCE TIP: BUILD MUSCLE BY EATING GRAPES
Trying to maintain some strength gains? You might find some help in the produce aisle, suggests a new study published in the journal Foods, which finds that grapes help maintain muscle mass (in mice, anyway). To conduct the study, researchers fed the equivalent of two daily servings of powdered grapes to both male and female mice over the course of 18 months, beginning at the first year of their life. They were compared to mice who weren’t fed grapes. The researchers found the mice who ate grapes had healthier muscles, and also that they had more expression of genes related to muscle health, and less expression of genes related to muscle degeneration. The researchers next intend to study if the effect holds up in humans, but in the meantime, it can’t hurt to grab some grapes and chow down after a good workout.
WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK
Over the holiday weekend I went to the theater to see Captain America: Brave New World. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s maybe not a classic Marvel film but it’s definitely in the upper 25%. I really like Anthony Mackie in the role and he played very well opposite Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus Ross. It’s definitely with a ticket if nothing else than to just see a good blockbuster on the big screen again.
MORE FROM FORBES
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2025-02-21 14:00:00
