Absolutely agree, but its important to distinguish between the actual quantum computing on one hand, and the materials development and Majorana particle discovery on the other hand.
What I was discussing was the latter. I.e. before you can get anywhere near computing and fidelities, you first need a qubit. The issue here is that Microsoft are like 80% sure they have the qubit they think they have. That doesn’t mean they have a qubit with 80% fidelity.
Article text:
A critique published in Nature Wednesday calls the basic technology behind Microsoft’s “breakthrough” quantum computing chip the Majorana 1 into question. Microsoft unveiled the chip in February 2025 and said it featured a brand-new technology known as a topological qubit. Topological qubits, they said, would be the “building blocks” for their future quantum computer. Microsoft announced the next generation chip Majorana 2 at Build earlier this month.
But in a peer-reviewed article, Henry Legg, a physicist at the University of St Andrews, reanalyzed Microsoft’s data on their device and argued that the company’s researchers did not conclusively demonstrate a working topological qubit in the first place.
Theory predicts that the electrons in this wire behave in a collective pattern known as a Majorana particle, for which the chip is named.
Proponents of quantum computing predict that the technology’s computational abilities will advance new medicine discovery, encryption, and machine learning. Companies like Google and IBM have already demonstrated more advanced machines than Majorana 1 or 2, although presently, no one has conclusively gotten any quantum computer to perform anything useful. But Microsoft claimed that Majorana 1, and subsequently Majorana 2, paved their path toward a practical quantum computer.
Microsoft’s design, unique among quantum computing companies, involves a tiny wire, thinner than a human hair, made of the semiconductor indium arsenide stuck to a superconductor. Theory predicts that the electrons in this wire behave in a collective pattern known as a Majorana particle, for which the chip is named. Microsoft wants to encode information in the properties of the Majorana particle. (A topological qubit is to a Majorana particle as a transistor is to silicon.)
Proponents of the Majorana particle think it is promising qubit material because theory predicts that when formed into topological qubits, the Majorana should compute with fewer errors than competing materials, such as superconducting circuits pursued by IBM. This suggests that ultimately, fewer topological qubits are needed to scale up to a useful quantum computer.
That is, if Microsoft has actually made a Majorana particle. “They haven’t convincingly shown that they have Majoranas,” Legg told The Verge. “You can’t make a qubit if you don’t have the Majoranas.”
In Legg’s critique, he writes that what Microsoft claims as a signature of the Majorana particle could actually be from the formation of quantum dots, which are electron-containing structures, in the device. Quantum dots would not be useful for building the quantum computer. He also writes that Microsoft cherry-picked their data.
“You can’t make a qubit if you don’t have the Majoranas.”
Microsoft’s team published a rebuttal in Nature disputing Legg’s interpretation of their data. Legg’s critique “does not constitute a substantial scientific challenge to our findings,” the Microsoft team wrote. Legg has not “proposed an alternative model that fits all of our data,” Chetan Nayak, a physicist leading Microsoft’s quantum team, told The Verge.
Legg first posted his critique on the online physics repository arXiv on March 11, 2025, within a month of Microsoft’s Majorana 1 announcement. It took a year for Nature to conduct a peer review and publish his article.
Meanwhile, on June 2, Microsoft announced a new chip, the Majorana 2, featuring what they claimed was the next generation of their topological qubits. The company says they can build a “scalable quantum computer” by 2029. “We 100% stand behind our results,” Nayak told The Verge. “We stand by our roadmap. We stand behind our long-standing commitment to scientific rigor and dialogue.”
Legg says the company’s characterization of Majorana 2, which Microsoft wrote in a non-peer reviewed manuscript, suffers from similar problems he pointed out a year ago. “Nothing in this [manuscript] resolves the fundamental issues that so many scientists have with this company’s previous claims,” Legg told The Verge.
Correction, June 24th: An earlier version of this article misstated the original date of publication of Legg’s critique. It was posted on March 11, 2025, not February 26, 2025.
The paper in question:
On the robustness of topological gap detection via transport
I’ve spoken to some folks at Microsoft about this, and I think the deeper issue here is the different standards of science and industry. If you’re demonstrating a fundamentally new physical phenomenon, in science you need to be 99.9999% sure, in industry they are okay with 80% sure.
Nej selvfølgelig ikke, men jeg synes godt nok også det er noget af en stråmand at konstruere.
Det antog jeg heller ikke, men er nysgerrig efter at høre dit argument. Det var ikke ment som en stråmand - jeg antog ikke at det var din holdning.
Jeg tror jeg har forklaret mit synspunkt og vi er bare uenige.
Det tror jeg ikke nødvendigvis vi er, men er nysgerrig på at grave dybere i dit synspunkt. Men selvfølgelig altid rimeligt at droppe en samtale der er træls!
Tal for svaret. Men er vi så ikke tilbage ved den illiberale stammetænkning? Altså at vi dropper respekten for individet og behandler mennesker efter deres gruppetilhørsforhold, selv om de måske netop er i gang med at fjerne sig fra den gruppe?
Ville det også være rimeligt at sige at nu hvor unge mænd er så overrepræsenteret blandt kriminelle burde vi forbyde mænd i alderen 18-24 at være ude efter solnedgang?
For at kigge mere specifikt på dine udsagn:
Men det gør det da meget nemmere.
Måske, men hvis det er unødvendigt og rammer uskyldige skulle vi så ikke lade være?
Tillid kommer af fælles værdier, og udlændinge vil altid komme med et andet værdisæt.
Tillid kommer af overskud og tiltro. Tillid er endda en grundlæggende god strategi i mødet med den fremmede ud fra et spilteoretisk synspunkt. Så det er ikke helt rigtigt det du siger.
Desuden har mange danskere mere til fælles værdimæssigt med udlændinge end andre danskere - f.eks. danske vegetarer og indere.
Hvordan kan du vedligeholde den hvis der kommer mere end 15% indvandrerer i befolkningen? Antallet af børn vil jo bare følge det.
Hvis 15% af alle danske børn er indvandrere, så må vi lave skolen om så den passer bedre til befolkningssammensætningen. I Luxembourg er halvdelen af befolkningen indvandrere og de klarer sig fint.
Faktisk vil det følge det mere, for indvandrerer får flere børn end danskere.
Indvandrere får vel ofte danske børn.
Why not both? Det er nemmere at undgå religionens indtog i samfundet hvis religiøse mennesker aldrig bliver en del af samfundet, trods alt. Så kan man have religionspolitik oven på det.
Fordi udlændingepolitikken rammer alle ateisterne med, uden at det er nødvendigt.
Ja, det er ærgerligt. Det er klart at man rammer nogen man ikke behøvede at ramme, sådan er det. Det må vi leve med, synes jeg.
Så du ville være okay med mit forslag om udgangsforbud for unge mænd?
For mig handler det fx om parallelsamfund
Er helt enig i at parallelsamfund skal bekæmpes, både indvandrerghettoer og klasseghettoer. Det behøver man dog ikke en stram udlændingepolitik for.
en nedbrydelse af tillid i samfundet
Stram udlændingepolitik repræsenterer mere nedbrydelse af tillid i samfundet en indvandringen - vi kan jo fint have tillid til indvandrere.
problemer i uddannelsessysteme
15% eller flere indvandrere per klasse lyder som en dårlig ide for både indvandrere og etniske danskere, men den kvotient kan vel fint vedligeholdes uden en stram udlændingepolitik?
Jeg er også ateist og stiller mig kritisk over for yderligere religiøsitet i samfundet
Her er det vel en strammere religionspolitik du er ude efter nærmere end en strammere udlændingepolitik. Indre Mission fylder meget i Vestjylland, lad os ramme dem lige så hårdt som radikale muslimer. Og med en stram udlændingepolitik risikerer du at blokere for de udlændinge der f.eks. prøver at undslippe det iranske teokrati.
Jeg er helt enig i at vi skal undgå parallelsamfund og ghettoer og skoleklasser med primært indvandrere, men hvis værktøjet dertil er at vi skal gøre det svært for muslimer at komme til Danmark og at leve i Danmark rammer vi en helt masse almindelige gode mennesker der gerne vil hertil og være gode medborgere.
Er der mange gode grunde til at ønske en stram udlændingepolitik? Det virker mest til at være baseret på illiberal stammetænkning. Men gad godt høre det gode argument.
What’s your plan when you get rich? Save it, invest it?
Hmm. Not saying this was justified, but I’m guessing it’s illegal to dox the prime minister, and shutting off the power could have been to grab his devices before he could delete his hard drives.
No excuse for confiscating the cameras though.
Indeed. But seriously, how does passing on leadership to their child for two generations in a row not give cause to super grave concern for all socialists?
One can be socialist and critical of dynastic states
Maybe you’ve mistaken criticisms of the MS claims for criticisms of quantum technology in general?
You can now see the estimated delivery date on the Steam Controller page!
Oof, ouch, my bones!
That would make those black holes the dark matter.
Also why don’t they evaporate like other small black holes? Sorry I can’t watch your video right now.
I used to love reading their video game diaries. They do them seldomly these days, if at all.
Stuff like this.
I like reading the RockPaperShotgun reviews. Nice writing, no score, usually some interesting points about the game going deeper than what a trailer shows.
In my experience most people understand that it’s not the fault of every individual citizen that their state behaves a certain way, but at the same time the citizens of a country have a vastly larger influence on their state than the citizens outside that country.
So no, don’t distance yourself from your country. Distance yourself from your government or state. And work in a safe way to leverage whatever influence you have over your fellow citizens, your local or national systems, to hinder the bad guys and help the good guys.
Ah, for sure, if you want the money to have a large piece of land and a house, a car, private healthcare, then you’re talking about the life of a rich man (from my perspective). You want to own property worth a million dollars plus, as you point out.
If you can get by without that much property, things get a lot easier. In the extreme you could live like a vagabond. In my Scandinavian home country some people live decent lives on the road without much property. Not comfortable lives, but not necessarily bad ones either.
Or with modest US savings you could move to a cheaper country and build a little life there.
Tak for grundigt svar. I stedet for at tage pointerne én efter én, ville det så være rimeligt at opsummere din holdning nogenlunde som følger?
At få adgang til Danmark er et privilegie vi ikke skylder nogen, og at få denne adgang må ikke ske på bekostning af det danske samfunds fremgang. Vi kan se ud fra statistikker at ikke-vestlige indvandrere integrerer sig dårligere i samfundet og skaber flere problemer ift. samfundets samhørighed, skolesystemet, øget religiøsitet og kriminalitet end andre indvandrere. Fordi disse problemer fortsætter med at forværres skal vi på omfattende og bred vis mindske indvandring fra ikke-vestlige lande for at beskytte vores samfund.
Jeg er imod kollektiv afstraffelse og at nægte individer rettigheder ud fra deres gruppetilhør (selvvalgt eller ej), og jeg tror grundlæggende på at et menneske født i Århus, et menneske født i Islamabad og et menneske født i Stuttgart har lige moralsk værdi som individer. Men fordi dansk statsborgerskab eller opholdsret er et privilegie, ikke en ret, så gælder denne ideologi ikke i dette tilfælde, og disse mennesker kan og bør forskelsbehandles baseret på deres fødested for vores samfunds bedste.