Britain’s plans to create advanced devices based on the mind-bending physics of the quantum world have received a £100m boost, in a move ministers hope will have a transformative impact on healthcare, transport and national security.
Peter Kyle, the science secretary has announced funds to establish five quantum technology hubs across England and Scotland. They will work with industry and government to develop and commercialise devices and ultimately drive a new economy.
“We are at the foothills of where quantum technology is going to take us and that provides a huge opportunity for British science and British research and development,” Kyle told the Guardian from Glasgow before Friday’s announcement. “If we get this right, we can become global leaders, which means not just solving challenges domestically and creating opportunities domestically, but being able to fully exploit the global market as well.”
The late Nobel prize-winner Richard Feynman once declared that “nobody understands quantum mechanics” but, since the earliest work more than a century ago, researchers have found ways to harness the bizarre effects. Quantum physics is now at work in semiconductors, MRI brain scanners, lasers and atomic clocks.
The hubs, based in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford and London, will aim to build the next generation of devices, from brain-scanner helmets and gravity sensors that detect underground pipes to quantum-enhanced blood tests that catch diseases early, and global positioning and precision-timing services that do not rely on GPS.
In one project, scientists at UCL are fine-tuning the quantum properties of atomic defects in diamond nanoparticles to develop ultra-sensitive blood tests. The technology allows scientists to draw a blood sample and detect minuscule amounts of proteins or DNA by making them flash like the beam from a lighthouse.
“A whole new generation of quantum sensors is beginning to appear and our hub is going to harness those to transform early diagnosis and treatment, where it has applications across cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s and infectious diseases,” said Prof John Morton at UCL. “We’re really excited about translating these weird and wonderful quantum sensors into practical applications that patients will benefit from.”
At the University of Birmingham, scientists are exploiting a quantum effect known as superposition to build gravity sensors that detect underground infrastructure. Such sensors could alert utilities companies to gas and water mains where they plan to dig, or help them find their own pipes to repair.
“Rather than lots of digging to find things – and lots of holes are dug in the wrong place – we can in principle find the infrastructure quicker,” said Prof Michael Holynski at Birmingham university. “We have already detected tunnels and pipes with the sensor we have in the hub. What we want to do in the next phase is make it something that can move quickly, and more accurately inspect the underground.”
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Other sensors draw on a quantum effect called entanglement to pinpoint gas leaks, such as methane, emanating from industrial facilities allowing them to be spotted and dealt with before they become a hazard.
“The global market for quantum is currently £9bn and in a decade it will be £90bn,” Kyle said. “If there is a global market growing that fast, we need Britain to be at the forefront.”