Britain’s plans to create advanced devices based on the mind-bending physics of the quantum world have been given 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 funding to establish five quantum technology centres in England and Scotland. They will work with industry and government to develop and commercialise devices and ultimately power a new economy.
“We are at the very beginning of quantum technology, which is a huge opportunity for British science and British research and development,” Kyle told the Guardian from Glasgow ahead of Friday’s announcement. “If we get it right, we can become a world leader, which means not just solving domestic challenges and creating domestic opportunities, but also being able to fully exploit the global market.”
The late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once said that “nobody understands quantum mechanics,” but since the early work was done more than a century ago, researchers have found ways to harness its strange effects. Quantum physics is now applied in semiconductors, MRI brain scanners, lasers and atomic clocks.
The centres, based in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford and London, will aim to build the next generation of devices, from helmets with brain scanners and gravity sensors that detect underground pipes to quantum-enhanced blood tests that detect diseases early, and global positioning and precision timing services that do not rely on GPS.
In one project, UCL scientists 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 tiny amounts of proteins or DNA by flashing them like a lighthouse beam.
“A new generation of quantum sensors is beginning to emerge and our centre will harness them to transform early diagnosis and treatment, where they have applications in cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s and infectious diseases,” said Professor John Morton from UCL. “We are very excited to translate these strange 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. These sensors could alert utilities to gas and water pipelines they plan to dig up, or help them find their own pipelines to repair.
“Instead of digging a lot to find things (and a lot of holes dug in the wrong place), we can in principle find infrastructure more quickly,” said Professor Michael Holynski of the University of Birmingham. “We have already detected tunnels and pipes with the sensor we have at the centre. What we want to do in the next phase is to turn it into something that can move quickly and inspect the subsurface more accurately.”
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Other sensors take advantage of a quantum effect called entanglement to locate gas leaks, such as methane, emanating from industrial facilities, allowing them to be located and addressed before they become a hazard.
“The global market for quantum technology is currently worth £9 billion and within a decade it will be £90 billion,” Kyle said. “If there is a global market that is growing this fast, we need Britain to be at the forefront.”