Will quantum researchers be under the same pressure as those in the graphene world?
The world of quantum mechanics is just weird. With such things as superposition and entanglement, it makes your head hurt just trying to understand the basics. It's no surprise that legendary physicist Richard Feynman once said that if you claimed to understand the quantum world, you obviously don't.
Yet the prospects offered by this strange technology are such that the Government in investing £270million in a network to address a range of quantum research topics, including communications, computing and sensing. The programme is bringing together 17 UK universities and 132 companies.
Is there a danger of this work being subjected to the same pressures as those being experienced by the graphene community? Similar amounts of Government cash have been applied to support the commercialisation of graphene, but even after a couple of years, people are beginning to wonder where the results are.
The five year investment will move quantum technology forwards, but we shouldn't expect to see quantum computers, for example, appearing immediately afterwards.
