Nordic Life Science 1
56 HOW THE NOBEL DISCOVERIES IN PHYSICS ARE Speed
ing Up Life Sciences Discoveries in next generation quantum technology have led to a number of cool life science applications, for example within drug discovery and magnetic brain recordings. T E X T B Y MA L I N O T MA N I J OHN CLARKE, MICHEL DEVORET AND JOHN MARTINIS will receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics from the hands of his Majesty the King of Sweden on December 10. They are being honored for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit. “It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that centuryold quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” stated Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, at the prize announcement. Drug discovery and brain recordings The transistors in computer microchips are one example of the established quantum technology that surrounds us, but the discoveries have also provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors. Within life sciences there are a number of cool applications based on these discoveries, the obvious being drug discovery, describes Magnus Boman, Professor in AI within Health at the department of medicine at Karolinska Institutet. “Every superconducting quantum computer uses Josephson junctions* as qubits, thus directly implementing the macroscopic quantum states that the laureates discovered. So when we calculate protein-folding energies or optimize drug-target interactions, we are using their fundamental discovery that quantum superposition can exist in circuits that are large enough to fabricate and control.” The three laureates also proved that quantum coherence could be maintained in macroscopic circuits, enabling today's SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) magnetometry, adds Boman. “Sweden's on-scalpMEG-technology [a magnetic brain recording, but with higher sensitivity and spatial precision than the conventional THE NOBEL PRIZE // PHYSICS