Woman leading race to build world's first quantum computer
Sydney, May 11: A team of Australian scientists has made great strides towards building the world's first quantum computer, using mostly standard silicon technology. The team is led by 50-year-old Michelle Simmons, a mother of three.
It is believed that the quantum computing technology could help address major global challenges like climate change and understanding complex diseases such as cancer.
"We're hoping to actually build computers here in Australia that will be able to do calculations in real time that would otherwise take thousands of years," Simmons, Professor at University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, said in statement.
The winner of the coveted 2018 Australian of the Year award leads a team of more than 200 researchers at eight universities across the country developing a cache of quantum computing technologies.
In the quantum world, every time a quantum bit (qubit) is added, the amount of information is doubled.
"If I can get to 300 qubits, there's a prediction that it's more than all the atoms in the universe working together as a calculation," Simmons said, adding that her team is the only one in the world that can manipulate individual atoms to make atomically precise electronic devices.
The progress made by the UNSW research programme has been possible to a great extent due to its focus on silicon, which is industrially-compatible and forms the basis for the existing computer and electronics industry.
The team focuses on making qubits out of single atoms of phosphorus or quantum dots in silicon.
In 2017, the British-born Simmons established Australia's first quantum computing company, Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), to develop, by 2022, a 10-qubit prototype silicon quantum integrated circuit -- the first step in building the world's first quantum computer in silicon.
The company is owned by the Australian Government, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Australian telecommunication Telstra, the UNSW and the New South Wales State Government.
"To be able to create technology that can be useful for humanity, to be able to create technology that can solve diseases, optimise weather patterns -- have all the implications to make the world a better place and understand the world -- is what drives me," said Simmons, who is also Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology (CQC2T).
In a statement released by UNSW in March, Simmons, said her team's work is inspired by the late American physicist Richard Feynman, whose birth centenary is on Friday.
Feynman is known for his path-breaking contribution to quantum theory -- especially its electrodynamics, which won him the Nobel Prize.
"Feynman said: 'What I cannot create, I do not understand'. We are enacting that strategy systematically, from the ground up, atom by atom," Simmons said.
"In placing our phosphorus atoms in the silicon to make a qubit, we have demonstrated that we can use a scanning probe to directly measure the atom's wave function, which tells us its exact physical location in the chip. We are the only group in the world who can actually see where our qubits are.
"Our competitive advantage is that we can put our high-quality qubit where we want it in the chip, see what we've made, and then measure how it behaves. We can add another qubit nearby and see how the two wave functions interact. And then we can start to generate replicas of the devices we have created," she said.
The team's latest advance - the first observation of controllable interactions between two qubits - was published in the journal Nature Communications.
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'Even Ajmal Kasab was given a fair trial': SC remarks in Yasin Malik case
New Delhi, Nov 21: Even Ajmal Kasab was given a fair trial in our country, the Supreme Court on Thursday remarked and indicated it may set up a courtroom inside Tihar Jail for the trial of J&K separatist leader Yasin Malik in a kidnapping case.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih was hearing a CBI plea against the September 20, 2022 order of a Jammu trial court that directed Malik, serving life term in Tihar jail, to be produced before it physically to cross-examine the prosecution witnesses in the kidnapping case of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of politician Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The bench, however, remarked, "How will cross-examination be done online? There is hardly any connectivity in Jammu... In our country, a fair trial was given even to Ajmal Kasab and legal assistance was given to him in the high court."
Kasab, the lone Pakistani gunman caught alive after the Mumbai terror attack, was hanged till death at the Yerawada Central Prison .
The bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the CBI, to take instructions on the total number of witnesses in the case.
Mehta pointed out security concerns and said Malik couldn't be taken to Jammu for the trial.
The law officer accused Malik of "playing tricks" for having asked to appear personally and not engaging a lawyer. Mehta said Malik was not an ordinary criminal and showed a purported photograph of Malik sharing the dais with terrorist Hafiz Saeed.
The top court said it could order trial to take place inside the jail premises and ask the judge to come to the national capital for the proceedings.
The bench, however, noted all the accused persons in the matter had to be heard before it passes an order.
Mehta said Malik appearing in the Supreme Court physically raised security concerns previously.
The bench said Malik could be allowed to appear virtually in the apex court proceedings and posted the matter on November 28.
The CBI in the meantime was directed to amend its petition and implead all accused persons as respondents.
In 2023, Mehta wrote to then Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla flagging a "serious security lapse" after Malik was brought to the Supreme Court to appear in a case.
Malik, serving life sentence in a terror-funding case, was brought to the high-security apex court premises in a prison van escorted by armed security personnel without the court's permission.
Expressing surprise at his presence, Mehta informed the apex court there was a procedure for high-risk convicts to be allowed into the courtroom to argue their case personally.
The CBI said Malik, the top leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was a threat to national security and cannot be allowed to be taken outside the Tihar jail premises.
The apex court on April 24, 2023, issued notices on the CBI's appeal following which the incarcerated JKLF chief wrote a letter to the registrar of the Supreme Court on May 26, 2023 seeking permission to appear in person to plead his case.
An assistant registrar took up his request on July 18, 2023 and said the apex court would pass necessary orders -- a decision the Tihar Jail authorities reportedly misconstrued to allow Malik to appear and argue his case.
Mehta referred to the CBI's contention in its appeal against the trial court order to bring Malik to Jammu for the in-person examination of the witnesses in the kidnapping case, and said under Section 268 of the CrPC a state government may direct certain people to not be shifted from the confines of a prison.
On September 20, 2022, a special TADA court in Jammu directed Malik to be physically produced before it on the next hearing for him to cross-examine prosecution witnesses in the kidnapping case.
The CBI challenged the trial court order before the Supreme Court as appeals in TADA cases are only heard by the top court.
Rubaiya was abducted near Lal Ded Hospital in Srinagar on December 8, 1989 and freed five days later after the then BJP-backed V P Singh government at the Centre released five terrorists in exchange.
Mufti, who now lives in Tamil Nadu, is a prosecution witness of the CBI, which took over the case in early 1990s.
Malik is lodged in Tihar jail after he was sentenced by a special NIA court in May, 2023 in a terror-funding case.
