Britain’s plans to create advanced devices based on the mental 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 announced funds to establish five quantum technology hubs across England and Scotland. They will work with industry and government to develop and commercialize devices and ultimately power a new economy.
“We are on the cusp of where quantum technology is going to take us and it presents a huge opportunity for British science and British research and development,” Kyle told the Guardian from Glasgow ahead of Friday’s announcement. “If we manage to do this, we can become world leaders, which means that we not only have to solve local challenges and create opportunities locally, but also fully exploit the global market.”
The late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once declared that “nobody understands quantum mechanics,” but since the earliest work more than a century ago, researchers have found ways to exploit 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-scanning helmets and gravity sensors that locate underground pipes to quantum-enhanced blood tests that detect disease early and globally positioning and precision-timing services which does not rely on GPS.
In one project, scientists at UCL are refining 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 flashing them like the beam of a lighthouse.
“A whole new generation of quantum sensors is starting to appear and our center will harness it 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 are very excited about translating these weird and wonderful quantum sensors into practical applications that will benefit patients.”
At the University of Birmingham, scientists are harnessing a quantum effect known as superposition to build gravity sensors that detect underground infrastructure. Such sensors can alert utility companies to gas and water lines where they plan to dig, or help them find their own pipes to repair.
“Rather than digging a lot to find things – and a lot of holes are dug in the wrong place – we can in principle find the infrastructure faster,” said Prof Michael Holynski at the University of Birmingham. “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 to make it something that can move quickly, and inspect the underground more accurately.”
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Other sensors use a quantum effect called entanglement to detect gas leaks, such as methane, coming from industrial facilities, so they can be detected and dealt with before they become a hazard.
“The global market for quantum is currently £9 billion and in a decade it will be £90 billion,” said Kyle. “If there is a world market that is growing this fast, Britain has to be at the forefront.”
