General discussions about "science" itself
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The paper in question:
On the robustness of topological gap detection via transport
I've spoken to some folks at Microsoft about this, and I think the deeper issue here is the different standards of science and industry. If you're demonstrating a fundamentally new physical phenomenon, in science you need to be 99.9999% sure, in industry they are okay with 80% sure.
Eh. In this case I think scientific standards are objectively correct.
A key figure-of-merit for quantum computing is 'fidelity', which you can basically think of as the probability that a given operation will produce the intended outcome. If you have a fidelity of 80%, you might be able to do some extremely simple calculations and run them several times to make sure they're right. But any serious multi-stage calculation quickly becomes impossible as the probability of something going wrong quickly adds up. For quantum computing to actually do anything useful, fidelity in the region of 99.9999% is basically non-negotiable, because this is what semiconductor gates in regular computers can achieve.
Absolutely agree, but its important to distinguish between the actual quantum computing on one hand, and the materials development and Majorana particle discovery on the other hand.
What I was discussing was the latter. I.e. before you can get anywhere near computing and fidelities, you first need a qubit. The issue here is that Microsoft are like 80% sure they have the qubit they think they have. That doesn't mean they have a qubit with 80% fidelity.
Ah okay - I think I misread your original comment. Agreed.
Surprised pikachu face
Article text:
A critique published in Nature Wednesday calls the basic technology behind Microsoft’s “breakthrough” quantum computing chip the Majorana 1 into question. Microsoft unveiled the chip in February 2025 and said it featured a brand-new technology known as a topological qubit. Topological qubits, they said, would be the “building blocks” for their future quantum computer. Microsoft announced the next generation chip Majorana 2 at Build earlier this month.
But in a peer-reviewed article, Henry Legg, a physicist at the University of St Andrews, reanalyzed Microsoft’s data on their device and argued that the company’s researchers did not conclusively demonstrate a working topological qubit in the first place.
Theory predicts that the electrons in this wire behave in a collective pattern known as a Majorana particle, for which the chip is named.
Proponents of quantum computing predict that the technology’s computational abilities will advance new medicine discovery, encryption, and machine learning. Companies like Google and IBM have already demonstrated more advanced machines than Majorana 1 or 2, although presently, no one has conclusively gotten any quantum computer to perform anything useful. But Microsoft claimed that Majorana 1, and subsequently Majorana 2, paved their path toward a practical quantum computer.
Microsoft’s design, unique among quantum computing companies, involves a tiny wire, thinner than a human hair, made of the semiconductor indium arsenide stuck to a superconductor. Theory predicts that the electrons in this wire behave in a collective pattern known as a Majorana particle, for which the chip is named. Microsoft wants to encode information in the properties of the Majorana particle. (A topological qubit is to a Majorana particle as a transistor is to silicon.)
Proponents of the Majorana particle think it is promising qubit material because theory predicts that when formed into topological qubits, the Majorana should compute with fewer errors than competing materials, such as superconducting circuits pursued by IBM. This suggests that ultimately, fewer topological qubits are needed to scale up to a useful quantum computer.
That is, if Microsoft has actually made a Majorana particle. “They haven’t convincingly shown that they have Majoranas,” Legg told The Verge. “You can’t make a qubit if you don’t have the Majoranas.”
In Legg’s critique, he writes that what Microsoft claims as a signature of the Majorana particle could actually be from the formation of quantum dots, which are electron-containing structures, in the device. Quantum dots would not be useful for building the quantum computer. He also writes that Microsoft cherry-picked their data.
“You can’t make a qubit if you don’t have the Majoranas.”
Microsoft’s team published a rebuttal in Nature disputing Legg’s interpretation of their data. Legg’s critique “does not constitute a substantial scientific challenge to our findings,” the Microsoft team wrote. Legg has not “proposed an alternative model that fits all of our data,” Chetan Nayak, a physicist leading Microsoft’s quantum team, told The Verge.
Legg first posted his critique on the online physics repository arXiv on March 11, 2025, within a month of Microsoft’s Majorana 1 announcement. It took a year for Nature to conduct a peer review and publish his article.
Meanwhile, on June 2, Microsoft announced a new chip, the Majorana 2, featuring what they claimed was the next generation of their topological qubits. The company says they can build a “scalable quantum computer” by 2029. “We 100% stand behind our results,” Nayak told The Verge. “We stand by our roadmap. We stand behind our long-standing commitment to scientific rigor and dialogue.”
Legg says the company’s characterization of Majorana 2, which Microsoft wrote in a non-peer reviewed manuscript, suffers from similar problems he pointed out a year ago. “Nothing in this [manuscript] resolves the fundamental issues that so many scientists have with this company’s previous claims,” Legg told The Verge.
Correction, June 24th: An earlier version of this article misstated the original date of publication of Legg’s critique. It was posted on March 11, 2025, not February 26, 2025.
It's actually kinda cool to see people focusing on topological quantum computing in industry. It's such a wild concept!