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Scientists Are Turning Molecules Into Qubits · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quart Side Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I want you to imagine the computer of the future,
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: just you know, picture the physical hardware in your head
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Most people are probably picturing something pretty sterile.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Right exactly, like glowing silicon wafer is stacked in some
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: massive server farm. Or maybe those giant, super cooled gold
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: chandeliers of wire that big tech companies are always showing
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: off in their press photos.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the classic quantum chandelier.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: We are so culturally conditioned to think the next big
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: leap in computing is just going to be like a colder,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: more densely passed version of traditional electronics. Yeah, but what
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: if the hardware of tomorrow doesn't really look like electronics
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: at all?
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: What if it looks like a chemistry experiment.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly, because today we are unpacking a major milestone from
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: May twenty twenty six from Envision Quantum Technologies, and it
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: sounds remarkably like science fiction. It really does.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: They basically took a single specifically engineered molecule, the Carbeene
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: right right, very particular type of molecule called the carbine,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: and they successfully turned it into a fully functioning unit
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: of quantum information, a molecular quibit.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: So if you're listening, just think about that for a second.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Imagine if instead of waiting for some massive semiconductor foundry
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: to shave like another nanimeter off a silicon chip, you
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: could literally just synthesize a perfect batch of microscopic hard
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: drives in a lab beaker.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: It's a complete inversion of how we think about engineering
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: because for decades the assumption has been that you construct
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: a computer from the top down, you know, manufacturing, etching, stamping, but.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Brewing the basic building blocks of a supercomputer. That forces
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: us to entirely rethink what a machine actually is.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Absolutely and our goal today is to unpack exactly how
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: these designer molecules actually hold data, why they might honestly
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: give current quantum computers a real run for their money,
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: and what this means for the future of the Internet.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: So to understand why this is such a big deal,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: we really have to look at the physical anatomy of
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: the hardware itself, like what exactly is a carben and
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: how does a cluster of atoms hold programmable information?
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Well, to answer that, we have to start with carbon.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Carbon is basically the fundamental backbone of organic chemistry. In
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: its most stable, happy state, a carbon atom likes to
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: form four chemical bonds with the atoms around it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: So like a standard methane molecule, you've got one carbon
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: atom in the middle holding hands with four hydrogen.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Atoms, exactly four hands holding four other atoms. But a
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: carbine forces carbon into this highly unusual state where it
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: only forms two bonds.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, so it's structural incomplete. It has empty hands.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, those empty hands are the defining feature. Because the
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: carbon atom is only forming two bonds, it is left
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: with two unshared, free floating electrons in its.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Outer show the ivolink carbon right divalent.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Now, in a normal setup, those two electrons might just
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: pair up and cancel each other out, but in this
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: specific carbiene they remain unpaired. They just sit there, highly
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: reactive and incredibly sensitive to their environment.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Those two lonely electrons are what actually store the data.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: The documentation points out that they create what's called a
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: triplet state, which I mean I know, a classical computer
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: stores data as a bit like a zero our.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: One, like a coin line flat on a table, its
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: heads or its.
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  Speaker 2: Tails, right, But how does a triplet state physically store
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: quantum information?
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: It all comes down to quantum spin. You can think
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: of an electron as having a tiny built in magnetic
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: compass needle. Okay, And because these two electrons are unpaired
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: but still interacting with each other, their needles basically align
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: parallel to one another. They act as a single combined
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: quantum system, and that parallel alignment gives them three possible
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: spin configurations, hence the term, you know, triplet. But because
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: it's a quantum system, it doesn't just pick one state
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: and stay there.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: It sits in a superposition. I always like to picture
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: quantum spin like a microscopic spinning top.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: That's a great analogy.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So a classical bit is like a top that
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: has already fallen over. It's definitively pointing left or right. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: But a quantum electron is an actively spinning top. It's
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: holding an incredibly complex amount of positional data while it's
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: in motion. It's in multiple orientations at the same time
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: until we force it to stop.
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  Speaker 3: That captures the complexity perfectly, and the challenge for physicists
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: hasn't really been proving that electrons spin. We know they do.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: The challenge is that these spinning tops are incredibly delicate.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Like if the table gets bumped, the top falls.
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  Speaker 3: Over right, a stray magnetic field, a tiny change in heat,
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: the top wobbles, it crashes, and all that quantum de
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: is just gone.
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  Speaker 2: So they've stabilized these spins and large groups of molecules before.
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  Speaker 3: Right, they have in large concentrated clusters. But the massive
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: shift here is that envision isolated and controlled the spin
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: of one single molecule.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Which is wild. The precision required for that is just
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: it's hard to wrap your head around. It's like trying
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: to pick out a single voice in a roaring stadium crowd.
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  Speaker 3: And not only did they isolate that single voice, they
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: demonstrated perfect addressability.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Meaning they could repeatedly control and read that one specific
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: molecule over and over exactly.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Plus they achieved spectral stability lasting over an hour.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Wait, really an hour. In quantum physics, where states normally
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: degrade in like fractions of a second, an hour is
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: an absolute eternity.
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  Speaker 3: It really is the dividing line between theoretical physics and
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  Speaker 3: applied engineering. Hitting that single molecule level with that kind
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: of stability means we finally have a viable individual building
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  Speaker 3: block for a real machine.
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  Speaker 2: Which immediately leads me to a pretty big mechanical problem.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Okay, what's up.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Well, if we have this incredibly fragile single molecule acting
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: as our spinning top atom, how do we physically interact
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: with it? I mean, you can't just solder a tiny
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: copper wire into a single carbon atom.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Definitely not.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: So if you want to write data to it or
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: read the data back out, how do you do that
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: without instantly knocking the top over?
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: You abandon physical wiring completely. You have to rely on
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: the optical interface. You use light.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Wait, so we are pressing save using lasers.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: We are transferring angular momentum using photons. Yeah, but you
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: can't just scatter these carbine molecules on a glass lide
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: and shine a flashlight up there.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Obviously not.
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  Speaker 3: They need a highly specialized support system. So what the
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: researchers do is they take a precursor molecule, which is
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: like a stable, chemically inactive version of the carbine, and
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: they embed it deep inside a host crystal.
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  Speaker 2: I've heard this compared to freezing a seed in an
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: ice cube tray, but that feels a bit, I don't know,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: too passive. It didn't really explain what the crystal is
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: actually do.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, A better way to look at it is that
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: the host crystal acts as a tailored molecular shock absorber.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Oh interesting because at the atomic scale, heat is really
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: just movement, its atoms vibrating, So if the environment is vibrating,
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: the molecule gets shaken apart and the quantum data is lost.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: But the crystal lattice is structurally matched to that precursor molecule.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: It acts like a custom foam case around a delicate watch.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: It absorbs and dampens all the acoustic and thermal vibrations
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: from the outside world.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: So the molecule is perfectly cradled. But once it's locked
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: in that shock absorber, how does the light actually turn
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: it on?
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  Speaker 3: They hit the crystal with a very specific calibrated pulse
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: of ultraviolet light.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: When the precursor molecule absorbs that UV light, a chemical
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: bond breaks. It sheds a small fragment, usually in a
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: nitrogen gas molecule, and what is left behind is the
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: active carbine, so.
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  Speaker 2: It's positioned exactly where they want it, locked safely inside
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: the crystal. Precisely, you essentially sculpt the hardware into existence
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: remotely using a laser pointer is so cool. And once
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: that carbene is active, they use different wavelengths of light
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  Speaker 2: to manipulate the spins of those two unsheared electrons. This
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: is the spin photon interface.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: So how does the data transfer actually work there?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: When a photon hits the molecule, it doesn't just illuminate it.
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  Speaker 2: A photon actually carries a tiny amount of energy and
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  Speaker 2: angular momentum, So when the electron absorbs that photon, it
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: physically absorbs that momentum, which forces its spin state to change.
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  Speaker 3: And that is how you write the data exactly. So
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  Speaker 3: is reading the data just the reverse process?
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: When the electron drops back down to a lower energy state,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: it emits a single photon back out, and the wavelength
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: and polarization of that emitted photon tell us exactly what
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: state the electron was in.
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  Speaker 3: So you are combining a matter quibit the physical electrons
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  Speaker 3: holding the memory with a flying quibot, which is the
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: photon carrying the information away.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, which means the molecule is functioning as both
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: the hard drive to store the data locally and the
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: router to transmit the data out. And if you step
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: back and look at the whole trajectory of the Internet,
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  Speaker 2: that dual capability is literally everything. It's the holy grail, right,
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  Speaker 2: because the ultimate goal isn't just to have a solitary
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: quantum computer sitting in a basement somewhere. It's to build
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: a quantum Internet. We need a way to store quantum
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  Speaker 2: states and securely beam them across fiber optic networks using light.
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  Speaker 3: And this molecular setup inherently speaks the language of a
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: quantum network because it natively emits those single photons.
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  Speaker 2: But there is a pretty big environmental factor we have
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: to address here.
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  Speaker 3: Temperature.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, because when I was looking at the details of
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: the milestone, I saw a number that immediately raise a
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: red flag. They are operating this pinfoton interface at roughly
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: four point five kelvin, And for context, if you're listening,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: four point five kelvin is about minus four hundred and
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: fifty degrees fahrenheit. It is marginally warmer than the vacuum
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: of deep space.
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  Speaker 3: It's very cold.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I thought the whole promise of moving away from traditional
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: quantum ore architectures was that we wouldn't need these massive,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: expensive cooling systems anymore.
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  Speaker 3: It does feel a bit contradictory, right, celebrating a revolutionary
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: new architecture that still requires liquid helium to function. And
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: it's a completely fair critique of the current demonstration.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: So to get those pristine hour long stability measurements, they
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: really had to freeze out almost all residual thermal energy.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: They did for this specific experiment. Yes, we are still
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: chained to the freezer. But, and this is important, we
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: have to separate the conditions of this initial proof of
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: concept from the fundamental physics of the material itself. Okay,
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: how so, well, the roadmap for molecules operates on entirely
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: different rules than the roadmap for solid state quibits like
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: superconducting loops or synthetic diamonds.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Right, Because a diamond is just a rigid rock. You
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: can't exactly negotiate with its thermal properties exactly.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Take nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds, which have been a
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: really popular candidate for solid state quantum tech are locked
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: into this highly rigid crystal lattice. If you want to
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: change how that diamond reacts to heat, your options are
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: incredibly limited.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Because you can't alter the diamond structure without literally destroying
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: the diamond.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: But molecules offer a scientifically viable pathway to operating at
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: much milder conditions, potentially even room temperature.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Wait, really, how is that possible if heat destroys quantum spin.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: Because you can chemically engineer the molecule to isolate its
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: own electrons, you can build insulating layers directly into the
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: molecular structure. It basically creates a chemical buffer zone around
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: the sensitive carbione center.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Which naturally leads to the biggest question here, the core
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: philosophical difference in how we build things. We're talking about
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: major tech companies that have spent well over a decade
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: and billions of dollars building superconducting circuits.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, entire supply chains are built around silicon fabrication, So.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Why would they ever pivot to molecules.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: It all comes down to the difference between a top
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: down approach and a bottom up approach to manifact.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Let's introduce a new analogy for everyone listening current quantum hardware.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: The stuff getting all the funding right now is top down. Right,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: imagine you have to create a perfectly smooth microscopic sphere.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: The top down approach means taking a giant block of marble,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: which in this case is a silicon wafer, and using
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: complex lithography and etching chemicals to carve away everything that
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: isn't a sphere.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: It's entirely subtractive exactly, it's carving, and it is brutally unforgiving.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: If there is a single microscopic flaw in the original
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: crystal lattice of that silicon, or if your etching process
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: overshoots by like a fraction of a nanometer, the quibit
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: is compromised.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: It suffers from decoherence.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Right And because it's a solid carved structure, you can't
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: just go in and patch it easily.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: But molecules are bottom up. It isn't carving marble. It's
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: like building with lego bricks. You start with an empty
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: table and you chemically snap individual atoms together until you
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: have built the exact structure you want from scratch.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Yeses, and that mechanism of synthetic chemistry provides a superpower
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: that solid state physics simply doesn't have, which is infinite
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: precise tuneability.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Tuneability. Okay, unpacked that for us.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Let's say you build a solid state quibit and test
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: it and you discover, uh, oh, it isn't holding its
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: memory long enough because it's too sensitive to magnetic noise
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: in the room.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: To fix that, you might have to reinvent your entire
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: manufacturing process, retool your clean rooms, change your etching protocol.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Basically a massive capital expenditure just to tweak the design exactly.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Now, imagine you test a molecular quibit and find the
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: exact same problem. A synthetic chemist doesn't have to rebuild
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: a factory. They go back to the lab and literally
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: swap out an atomic attachment on the molecule itself.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: You pop off a blue lego brick and snap on
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: a green one.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Basically, Yeah, those attachments are called ligends or substituents. If
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: we look back at the diaryl car being we were
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: talking about earlier, those arrow rings actually act like physical
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: bumper guards. Yeah, they provide steric hindrance. It's physical bulk
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: that blocks other reactive molecules from crashing into the sensitive
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: carbon center.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Oh wow. So they act as physical armour.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: For the data exactly, and you can tune that armor.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: If you attach highly electronegative atoms like fluorine to those ligands,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: it physically pulls the electron cloud tighter around the molecule.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Which alters how it interacts with external fields.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Right, you can adjust the exact optical wavelengths it responds,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: to shift its spin interactions, or tailor it to fit
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: perfectly inside different host crystals.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: That level of atomic customization changes the entire economic model
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of quantum hardware, because if you're building traditional quantum chips,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: your bottleneck is the clean room. You need billion dollar
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: ultrasterile facilities just to carve the silicon.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: But if you are sympthesizing molecules, the scalability is completely
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: uncoupled from silicon fabrication. You synthesize them in a liquid solution.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: So a standard chemical reactor could just brew trillions of identical,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: perfectly formed quibits in a single batch.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, And because they aren't bound to a rigid silicon wafer,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: the deployment methods completely open.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Up, meaning you don't have to slot a chip into
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: a motherboard. You could deposit the quibits as thin films.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: You'd literally paint a layer of quantum processors onto a.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Surface exactly using techniques like spin coating, and Vision is
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: already plotting how to layer these molecular systems directly onto
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: integrated photonic chips.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: That is incredibly dense architecture. Right.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: You could construct hybrid devices where a traditional silicon backbone
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: handles the classical routing and power delivery, while a painted
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: layer of molecules handles the quantum processing.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: That kind of industrial versatility really explains why this is
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: moving out of academic journals and into commercial boardrooms. I mean,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: if you're wondering why a microscopic chemistry experiment actually matters
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: to you, it matters because the market is placing massive
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: bets on it.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Absolutely alongside this scientific breakthrough, Envision secured fifty five million
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: dollars in Series B funding.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Fifty five million is a formidable signal. It demonstrates that
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: institutional investors are looking at the limitations of current superconducting
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: technology and they're actively funding alternative paradigms, and.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: They're using that capital to scale up what they call
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: their PIQC platform or Pixie. What's so fascinating about their
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: corporate trajectory is the aggressive pivot. They actually built their
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: reputation on quantum sensing, right.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: Using these skin states to hyperpolarize molecules for advanced MRI imaging.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: They're using quantum mechanics to build better medical scanners. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: now they're taking that fifty five million and driving straight
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: into the hardest problem in technology full glown quantum computing.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: And we should be clear transitioning from a highly specialized
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: sensor to a universal computing platform is a monumental leap
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: and complexity. We need to ground this in the physical
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: hurdles that still exists.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no one is synthesizing a molecular laptop next week,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: definitely not. So let's outline the roadblocks. What is physically
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: preventing us from snapping a billion of these molecules together
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: tomorrow and just turning them on.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Well, the universal enemy of all quantum architecture is decoherence.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: We establish that the electron spins are like delicate spinning tops.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Decoherence is the process of the environment slowly bleeding the
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: energy and alignment away.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: From those tops, the table getting bumped by stray magnetic fields,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: cosmic rays or thermal vibrations exactly now.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: The current data reveals that these single carbine molecules can
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: maintain a coherent quantum state for over two milliseconds. Furthermore,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: there's spin relaxation time, which is the time it takes
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: for the top to completely lose its energy and fall over.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Is in the tens of milliseconds, which.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Sounds incredibly fast to a regular person, but in the
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: realm of quantum operations, where a single calculation takes nanoseconds,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: two milliseconds actually provides a pretty substantial window to execute algorithms.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: It is an excellent baseline for a single molecule, but
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: to build a fault tolerant computer, one that can correct
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: its own errors faster than they occur, those coherence times
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: must be extended significantly. However, the true nightmare scenario isn't
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: managing one quibbit. It's the orchestration of the two quibit.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Gait, meaning getting two isolated molecules to talk to each
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: other without destroying each other's data.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, consider the physics of a high density molecular chip.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: If you pack millions of molecules tightly together so they
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: can interact quickly, their individual magnetic fields start to interfere,
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: you get crosstalk.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, so they jam each other's.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Signals, right, But if you space them too far apart
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: to prevent interference, they can't effectively entangle with each other
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: to process operations.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: So you have a thread and impossible needle maintaining the
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: ability to target one specific molecule with a laser while
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: simultaneously forcing it to entangle its skin state with a
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: neighbor and shielding both of them from the noise of
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: the millions of other molecule surrounding them.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: It is an incredibly delicate balance of proximity and isolation.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: But you know, exploring these hurdles reveals an incredible, almost
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: poetic irony about the entire quantum computing industry. The feedback loop, Yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: the virtuous cycle. If you look back over the last
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: twenty years, one of the ultimate goals of quantum computing,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: the main reason governments even wanted to build them, was
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: to simulate chemistry.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Right, because classical computers simply lack the processing power to
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: map the quantum states of large molecules. The math scales
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: exponentially and just chokes traditional processors.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly, we spend decades trying to build artificial quantum computers
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: out of silicon, lasers and super cooled metal, just so
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: we could finally simulate complex molecules. And now the molecules
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: themselves are replacing the silicon. The chemistry we wanted to
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: simulate has literally become the hardware.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: It initiates a feedback loop of pure technological acceleration. The
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: better our current generation of computers gets at modeling molecular behavior,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: the better we become at designed optimal molecular quibits. Oh wow, Yeah,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: we can simulate a carbine with the perfect ligen detachments
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: in a computer before we ever synthesize it in a lab.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: So synthesize that perfect molecule becomes more powerful quantum computer,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: which in turn simulates an even more robust molecular architecture.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Exactly. We are using the physics to solve the chemistry
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: to build better physics.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: That is amazing. Yeah, and looking ahead toward twenty thirty,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: this clearly signals the end of a monolithic approach to hardware.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: The narrative that there will be one single winner in
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: the quantum hardware race is totally obsolete. We are moving
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: away from the idea that superconducting circuits will just eradicate
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: everything else. We are entering an era of deep technological diversification.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: A diverse ecosystem, So you might see a future data
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: center where super cooled solid state systems are handling specific,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: massive algorithmic heavy lifting.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Right while photonic systems are managing the secure routing of
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: data across.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: The network, and these highly tunable synthetic molecular systems are
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: deployed alongside them for hyperdense memory storage, localized processing, or
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: massively parallel chemical simulations.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: The precision of bottom up organic chemistry has finally caught
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: up to the rigorous demands of quantum physics. These synthesized,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: customizable molecules are legitimately positioning themselves as the foundational atoms
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: of tomorrow's machines.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Which leaves us with the truly profound kind of mind
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: bending question about the future of human labor in the
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: tech sector. Think about it. If the supercomputers of tomorrow
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: are no longer etched in massive silicon foundries by electrical engineers,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: but are instead synthesized molecule by molecule and chemical reactors,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: what does that mean for the people who will have
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: to build and program them. If the hardware is chemistry, well,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the next generation of visionary computer scientists actually need to
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: be trained as synthetic chemists. It is an incredible shift
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: in how we build the future. Until next time, keep
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: questioning what's possible.