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<ul class="summary-list"><li>French researchers used a powerful MRI machine to create detailed brain scans of about 20 people.</li><li>The images are nearly 10 times more detailed than a hospital MRI's scans.</li></ul><p>Researchers have unveiled images of the human brain from the world's most powerful MRI, which could one day lead to breakthroughs in treating Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases. The images are almost 10 times as detailed as those of a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/brain-scans-dying-man-study-life-flashed-before-his-eyes-2022-2">typical hospital MRI</a>.</p><p>Researchers at France's Atomic Energy Commission scanned the brains of about 20 people<strong> </strong>with the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/experts-question-whether-prenuvos-whole-body-mri-scans-are-necessary-2022-10">magnetic resonance imaging machine</a>, called Iseult.</p><p>The volunteers only had to spend four minutes in the machine for the scientists to take remarkably detailed images, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cea.fr/english/Pages/News/world-premiere-living-brain-imaged-with-unrivaled-clarity-thanks-to-world-most-powerful-MRI-machine.aspx">according</a> to a press release. Trying to capture <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-survivors-gray-matter-brain-tissue-long-term-study-2021-6">similar scans</a> with an ordinary machine would take hours.</p><p>"With this machine, we can see the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-can-kill-brain-cells-impairing-cognitive-function-study-2021-10">tiny vessels</a> which feed the cerebral cortex, or details of the cerebellum which were almost invisible until now," Alexandre Vignaud, a researcher on the project, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sciencealert.com/first-images-of-human-brain-from-worlds-most-powerful-mri-revealed">told Agence France-Presse</a>.</p><h2>A machine powerful enough to capture thousands of neurons</h2><p>The strength of MRI magnets is measured in a unit called Teslas. Most hospital machines are between 1.5 and 3 Teslas. France's machine is 11.7 Teslas.</p><p>With such a powerful magnet, the MRI takes <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-brain-map-accomplishes-what-scientists-have-been-working-on-for-100-years-2016-7">high-resolution images</a> so detailed they can show a few thousand neurons or nerve cells. By comparison, MRIs typically record 600,000 neurons, according to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/breakthrough-brain-imaging">University of California, Berkeley</a>.</p><p>Think of it like trying to spot a squirrel in a picture of a backyard. It might be easier if you could focus on a tree or even a specific branch.</p><div type="image" title="Three brain scans from different powered MRIs, with the least detailed at the left and the most at the right" height="720" width="1280" msid="109204995" hostid="261" sizebytes="109952"></div><p>Such detailed images could help researchers look for changes in the brain and learn new information about how the organ functions. For example, some scientists at France's Atomic Energy Commission want to look at how and where the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/health/mental-health/what-is-lithium">drug lithium</a> moves in the brain to better understand how to treat bipolar disorder.</p><h2>The US is working on its own high-powered MRI machines</h2><p>Though not quite as powerful as Iseult, there are MRI machines at the University of California, Berkeley and <a target="_blank" href="https://today.duke.edu/2023/04/brain-images-just-got-64-million-times-sharper">Duke University</a> with 7 Tesla and 9.4 Tesla magnets, respectively.</p><p>Researchers at these and other institutions are hoping to use high-powered MRIs to study animal and human brains to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/detecting-and-preventing-cognitive-decline-with-ai-2023-11">look for changes</a> related to Alzheimer's, dyslexia, dementia, and other diseases.</p><p>Physicians at the Cleveland Clinic, for example, <a target="_blank" href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/patient-stories/559-young-womans-epileptic-seizures-gone-after-discovery-from-7-tesla-mri">used</a> a 7 Tesla MRI machine to find the location of a tiny lesion that was causing a patient's epileptic seizures. Images from regular MRIs were too low-resolution for them to show up, according to the Cleveland Clinic.</p><p>It will be several years before doctors can use Iseult and other similar MRIs to diagnose patients since they're still <a target="_blank" href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10334-023-01063-5">studying</a> the effects such a powerful magnet has on the human body.</p>

Researchers used the world's most powerful MRI to get brain scans that are 10 times as detailed as a hospital MRI — take a look

<br /><ul><li><strong>Scientists successfully performed the world’s smallest <keyword id="50675" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="MRI">MRI</keyword> on iron and titanium atoms.<br /></strong></li><li><strong><keyword id="31803" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Magnetic-resonance-imaging">Magnetic Resonance Imaging</keyword> (MRIs) is usually done on human structures to detect tumors and structure of joints.<br /></strong></li><li><strong>The technique thus developed is expected to help scientists to introduce new drugs in the biological structures and medicine.</strong></li></ul>Scientists have performed the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/science/microscope-atom-magnetic-mri.html">world’s smallest MRI</a> on single atoms using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) — the very same used to detect joint structures and tumours at hospitals.<br /><br />This time around, MRI technology was used to measure magnetic fields and spins of a single atom — the smallest existing chemical element, according to the Journal <keyword id="1615872" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nature-Physics">Nature Physics</keyword>.<br /><br />In this case, the scientists from IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose and the Institute for Basic Sciences in Seoul, used <a href="https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2019/07/01/Scientists-perform-worlds-smallest-MRI-on-single-atoms/5911562010117/">iron and titanium</a> atoms for the experiment. <br /><br />The researchers came up with an MRI machine that can measure millions of spins of not just organs and body structures, but the tiniest particles as well, improving the quality of quantum research.<br /><br /><strong>What happens in an MRI?</strong><br /><br />The machine uses strong magnets to create a <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/a-teeny-tiny-mri-machine-has-imaged-the-magnetic-fields-of-single-atoms">magnetic field around the human structure,</a> which in turn changes the spin of protons in the nucleus of the body. This aligns to the spin in the motion of magnetic fields. The energy then released by protons are detected by sensors and translated into an image. <br /><br />However, in the case of atoms, the scientists used <keyword id="942788" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="scanning-tunneling-microscope">scanning tunneling microscope</keyword> as the tiny MRI machine to produce an image of individual atoms. A bunch of magnetised iron atoms was fastened on the tip. Using radio frequency pulse, the energy produced by the electrons was pictured.<br /><br />The technique is expected to help scientists to introduce new drugs in the biological structures and medicine.<br /><br />“We can now see something that we couldn’t see before. So our imagination can go to a whole bunch of new ideas that we can test out with this technology, ” The New York Times<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/science/microscope-atom-magnetic-mri.html"> reported </a>citing researcher Christopher Lutz, from IBM.<br /><br /><strong>See also:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/you-no-longer-need-to-know-chinese-languages-if-you-want-to-study-medicine-in-china/articleshow/69249827.cms">You no longer need to know Chinese languages if you want to study medicine in China</a><strong><br /></strong>

World’s smallest MRI scanned — and it did not capture the human body this time

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The internet went wild over reports that scientists discovered a room-temperature superconductor.</li><li>It then embarked on a giant public experiment to replicate the findings.</li></ul><p>It's been a wild few weeks for the global science community which was briefly yet gloriously mesmerized by what looked like a piece of rock.</p><p>Toward the end of July, researchers in South Korea unveiled a rock-like material no bigger than a tiny shard of glass, named <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-lk-99-superconductor-room-temperature-news">LK-99</a>, and declared it as the world's first <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/superconductors-nuclear-fusion-need-chatgpt-moment-2023-8">room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor</a>. </p><p>In its most basic sense, a superconductor describes any material with properties that render electrical resistance — a measure of how well something resists the flow of electricity — essentially nonexistent.</p><p>Resistance means we waste electricity pretty much whenever we use anything that requires power. Discovering a room-temperature superconductor would end this inefficiency, make the stuff of science fiction a reality, and completely change the way humans live. </p><p>Niladri Banerjee, a senior lecturer in the department of physics at Imperial College London, told Insider that, at an atomic level, this dropoff in resistance happens when negatively-charged electrons, which would usually repel each other, bond to form pairs "under very special circumstances." This bonding creates stability that prevents the kind of scattering that would usually cause resistance.</p><p>The conditions for bringing this about are pretty unworkable.</p><p>"They form at very low temperatures," Banerjee said. "If you increase the temperature, thermal disruption — all the jiggling of the atoms and electrons — causes the pairs to break." </p><p>In the case of a metal such as niobium, which is used as a superconductor today, it takes a temperature of roughly -263 degrees Celsius to crush electrical resistance. </p><p>So when the LK-99 findings were <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008" target="_blank" rel="noopener">submitted on arXiv, an open repository for research papers,</a> scientists over the world expressed both disbelief and euphoria given the world-changing implications.</p><p>Much of the subsequent drama has derived from the fact the claims were not peer-reviewed before publication, meaning they need to be replicated before anyone can get really excited. Knowing this, a host of professionals and <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1687405505604734978" target="_blank" rel="noopener">armchair scientists</a> leaped to action in a giant internet-wide and fevered public experiment.</p><p>Unfortunately, in less than 30 days since the paper landed like a bomb, their results suggest it was a dud. </p>  <p>In a thread on X, <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelSFuhrer/status/1689446900284764160?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Fuhrer, a professor at the School of Physics at Monash University in Australia</a>, said the original paper served its purpose, even if it led to researchers exposing flaws in the research.</p><p>"The scientists who reported LK-99 now know exactly what questions need to be addressed to produce convincing evidence of superconductivity.....which will move the science faster if there is anything there to find," he said. </p><p>It's an "if" that is too big to ignore, though Banerjee says there are <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/spectacular-superconductor-claim-making-news-here-s-why-experts-are-doubtful" target="_blank" rel="noopener">some caveats</a>: A room-temperature superconductor alone won't accelerate technological progress. </p><p>That said, a future discovery would, in Banerjee's words, make for "one of the greatest breakthroughs in physics in the last century." </p><p>Here's how a room-temperature superconductor could change everything:</p><h2><strong>A revolution in the medical industry</strong></h2><div type="image" title="MRI radiologists or technologists working" height="1333" width="2000" msid="102647761" hostid="261"></div><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/experts-question-whether-prenuvos-whole-body-mri-scans-are-necessary-2022-10">MRI scans</a> are a vital tool in a doctor's assessment of a patient, with their strong magnets and radio waves capable of producing incredibly detailed visuals of the inside of a human body. Unfortunately, they also cost a heck of a lot of money. </p><p>It's not uncommon for MRI machines to cost anywhere over $1 million. With a room-temperature superconductor, that cost could dwindle.</p><p>Massoud Pedram, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Southern California, <a href="https://theconversation.com/room-temperature-superconductors-could-revolutionize-electronics-an-electrical-engineer-explains-the-materials-potential-201849" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says it will do away with the need for liquid helium coolant</a>, an "expensive and in-short-supply" material used to keep machines cool enough to operate.</p><p>Banerjee says that this heat often comes because "in MRI you need a large magnetic field" at a high pressure — something that comes from wrapping up a copper wire in several coils and feeding it a high current. In order to overcome that problem in part, he says, you could have "superconductors being coiled around" instead, as a large current can pass through it without any "heat dissipation."</p><h2><strong>Maglev trains everywhere</strong></h2><div type="image" title="maglev train shanghai china" height="1958" width="3000" msid="102647762" hostid="261"></div><p>Shanghai's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hsr/chinas-maglev">260 mph-plus maglev</a>, a high-speed train connecting Pudong International Airport to the rest of the city while levitating above the tracks, is a feat of engineering that few have been able to emulate. </p><p>In a world of futuristic superconductors, that may no longer be the case. By drastically reducing electricity costs, maglev trains would instantly become more financially viable in other parts of the world as they'd be able to travel over longer distances at a fraction of the cost.</p><h2><strong>A world of fusion energy</strong></h2><div type="image" title="Two people in white coverall suits look at the machinery at the National Ignition Facility Target Area." height="1500" width="2250" msid="102647764" hostid="261"></div><p>For its advocates, fusion holds the promise of limitless clean energy — something that would completely change the way researchers and policymakers approach the existential challenge of the climate crisis.</p><p>In 2020, researchers from MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, as well as the spinout startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems, found a way of <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/superconductor-technology-smaller-sooner-fusion-1013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">using high-temperature superconductor "cable technology" to generate the strong magnetic fields</a> needed to contain plasma generated in fusion reactions. </p><p>A room-temperature superconductor would go a step further in helping create these fields under normal conditions.</p><h2><strong>Electric vehicles made cheaper</strong></h2><div type="image" title="Teslas charging" height="1668" width="2500" msid="102647768" hostid="261"></div><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk">Elon Musk has said his grand ambition at Tesla</a> is to make electric vehicles much more affordable for everyone. With room-temperature superconductors, EV makers might be able to take a closer step toward delivering cheap battery-run cars. </p><p>As <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/02/room-temperature-superconductors/#:~:text=Room%2Dtemp%20superconductors%20would%20make,DC%2FAC%20and%20voltage%20conversions." target="_blank" rel="noopener">TechCrunch reports</a>, the windings in EV motors could be reduced significantly, while having the potential to minimize charging time and reduce the heat that can cause battery fires.</p><p>Banerjee said that like in other areas, replacing copper and other conducting wires in EVs with a superconductor could lead to "zero dissipation or very very low dissipation" of heat.</p><h2><strong>Quantum computers inch closer</strong></h2><div type="image" title="Quantum computing microchip" height="3000" width="4000" msid="102647770" hostid="261"></div><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/quantinuum-new-quantum-computer-microsoft-jpmorgan-nvidia-2023-5">Quantum computers</a> are touted as the future of computing and operate in a realm of qubits rather than the bits of zeroes and ones that today's computers do. These qubits potentially offer a scale of computing that is exponentially more powerful than current systems.</p><p>They remain a distant promise at a commercial scale for several reasons, not least because <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/quantum-computing-investing-computers-enterprise-2021-3">scaling qubits</a> generates all sorts of noise and heat that lead to errors. It forces machines to be kept at extremely cold temperatures.</p><p>This is where room-temperature superconductors could one day step in. By getting rid of electricity waste, they would, in theory, drastically reduce the energy demands and heat of these computers, paving the way for their use in everything from the financial system to machine learning. </p>

The internet just went on a wild quest that could result in floating trains and cheap EVs

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Quantifind</span></p><p class="caption">Quantifind founder and president Ari Tuchman</p></div><p></p></div></div><a href="http://www.quantifind.com">Quantifind</a> president Ari Tuchman doesn't have the background you might expect from a startup founder.</p><p>Rather than a computer science degree from Princeton or MIT, or an MBA from Harvard, Tuchman holds a PhD in atomic physics from Yale - specifically with a focus on Bose Einstein condensation. His cofounder, John Stockton, is a quantum particle physicist. </p><p>Before Quantifind, he was a research scientist with Stanford University.</p><p>"That's kind of what I thought I'd be doing," <span>Tuchman says. </span></p><p>As you might expect, its been a long, weird trip for Quantifind's founders from academia into the heart of the Silicon Valley tech startup scene. But it's paid off.</p><p>Today, Quantifind announces a new $30 million investment from Redpoint Ventures as it continues its mission of helping big corporations - like Pepsi and Heineken - understand what their customers want, sell more product, and generally make better decisions. </p><p>So far, so good. Tuchman says that Quantifind is serving Fortune 1000 customers in all industries.</p><p>It's not as big a shift as you'd think. Tuchman recalls his Yale PhD thesis advisor telling him "Half of physics is marketing." </p><h2>A new grant</h2><p>The Quantifind founders didn't really intend to end up in the data processing business. </p><p>But in 2007, the two scientists decided to team up and explore how their research could best be applied to the real world. That process involved a lot of sketching ideas and throwing them away when they realized they had been beaten to the punch, Tuchman says. </p><p>In 2009, Tuchman and Stockton had their first really solid, marketable idea: Applying their quantum particle research towards making portable MRI kits for United States Army medics to use on the battlefield. The two spent months working from a Silicon Valley donut shop, filing the paperwork to patent the battlefield MRI technology.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://vimeo.com/4834650">Vimeo/JonO</a></span></p><p class="caption">A surprising amount of quantum physics goes into a high-accuracy MRI reading.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The good news for Tuchman and Stockton was that the patent got them noticed by the National Science Foundation, the US government's research investment agency.</p><p>The weird part was that the NSF wasn't interested in the MRI aspect - they were interested in the intensely complicated math their scanner used under the hood to filter out quantum signal from microscopic noise. </p><p>"Just a bit of the signal you're interpreting is actually meaningful," Tuchman explains.</p><p>At the teeny-tiny particle physics level, you need to know how to separate out, say, dust particles from the atom-size bits of tissue you're trying to analyze. Those same equations can be fine-tuned to sift through Excel spreadsheets and other troves of data to sift the answers you need from the proverbial haystack. </p><p>With NSF grant money in hand, Quantifind was officially incorporated in 2009.</p><h2>The Disney challenge</h2><p>Quantifind's earliest customers included the CIA, which used Quantifind's technology to trace counterfeit money and suss out fake identities of known criminals, Tuchman says. It also got used by medical researchers to pull out answers from genetic data. </p><p>All of these "fun, fairly random" customer deals were fine, Tuchman says. But a lack of a real direction for the company slowed things down when it came time to go out and seek investor cash.  </p><p>"Hey, great job catching terrorists and curing cancer, but can you help me sell more movie tickets?" a Disney exec told him after a pitch, as Tuchman recalls.</p><p>Those kinds of comments snapped Quantifind's model into focus: Rather than just do a few isolated data analysis deals here and there, it would reposition itself as a way for big companies to look at Facebook, Twitter, and the like, and use it to figure out the future of the business.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Quantifind</span></p><p class="caption">Quantifind's flagship Signum engine.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>In other words, Quantifind helps its customers - mostly Fortune 1000-level companies in Hollywood, restaurants, retail, and other industries - use social media to figure out which way customers are going to jump when it comes to any given product or service, and adjust their business accordingly.</p><p>It comes back to that quantum imaging thing. People watching about a movie trailer aren't necessarily going to go see the movie. But if they post a link to the trailer on their Facebook, alongside a comment about how they can't wait for date night (or whatever), it probably means they'll shell out for a ticket. </p><p>Quantifind cuts through that noise and goes beyond what Tuchman describes as "buzz and sentiment" to give you a better guess of where customers will spend their money. If you detect that they like (or don't like) a product or video, you can tailor your business accordingly.</p><p>"We kind of tackled the Disney challenge head on," Tuchman says. </p><p>(Tuchman says Quantifind can't comment on whether Disney, or any other big company, is a current customer.)</p><h2>Against the grain</h2><p>Since 2009, Quantifind has raised $42 million in investment cash, including the funding round today. In the middle of 2015, Quantifind hired Adobe veteran David Karnstedt as CEO, freeing the founders up to focus on the product. </p><p>The new round will go towards the overall growth of Quantifind, from hiring to product R&amp;D. Tuchman says that there's a certain point at which you just need a cash infusion in order to grow. </p><p>While rivals including startup <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mixpanel-predict-helps-uber-see-into-the-future-2015-11">Mixpanel</a> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-watson-health-acquires-truven-health-analytics-2016-2">IBM Watson</a> also have similar prediction-based businesses, Tuchman says that they measure completely different things than Qunatifind. </p><p>Tuchman says that the market for startup funding may be slow today, as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-reset-vcs-startups-go-from-greed-to-fear-2016-2">investors reconsider their positions amid a larger market slowdown, sure</a>. But it's about the same level as 2009, when Quantifind was first going after funding in the wake of the massive funding bubble, Tuchman says.</p><p>And in both cases, the company was able to find some cash, after all. That's because in 2009, as now, it's just important to make sure that the core of the business is strong and that you're actually making money, not just hype.</p><p>"The similarity between '09 and now is a real focus on making sure what's under the hood is real," Tuchman says. </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-abandoned-disney-world-super-creepy-2015-12">China's abandoned Wonderland park will send chills down your spine</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="g3MnFpeTqMCymt86exugy3F6-5YHY2lS" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

This Stanford physicist quit academia to help companies like Pepsi sell more soda

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CMS_Higgs-event.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></p></div></div>Since the advent of personal computers, the name of the game has been miniaturization.</p>
<p>How small can we shrink down transistors? How many of those transistors can we cram onto a computer chip? This is one of the main strategies in making our computers faster and more powerful.</p>
<p>But we're quickly approaching an inconvenient plateau – very soon, the idea of shrinking down computer parts just won't be possible and won't make any sense. When an electronic component is just a few atoms wide, how do you improve on that?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/international-conference-on-quantum-technologies-2013-7">We recently spent a week in Moscow surrounded by some of the world's brightest scientific minds</a><span> to learn all about quantum technology – what it is, where it's heading, and how it can make our lives better. The International Conference on Quantum Technologies, sponsored by the </span><a href="http://rqc.ru/eng/">Russian Quantum Center</a><span>, saw professors, theorists, and physicists of all stripes come together to present their ideas to each other. The results were astounding.</span></p>
<p><span>"We're running out of ways to make computers faster and quantum technology is clearly the next step," Professor Vladimir Shalaev told Business Insider.</span></p>
<p>"Quantum technology" is a blanket term for technology that makes use of the weirdness of the quantum world to accomplish tasks. Some classic examples of this "weirdness" are most readily found in electrons, which are part of essentially every atom in the universe. They can move forwards and backwards in time, exist in two places at once, and can even teleport by way of a process called quantum tunneling.</p>
<p>This smacks of magic, but it's very real, having been confirmed by countless experiments over the past hundred years or so. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Quantum mechanics, for all its quirks and idiosyncrasies, is one of the most tested and verified theories in <keyword id="55984" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="physics">physics</keyword>.</span></p>
<p>In practical terms, quantum weirdness is already laying the foundation for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nicolas-gisin-on-quantum-encryption-2013-7">u</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nicolas-gisin-on-quantum-encryption-2013-7">nbreakable codes</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/metamaterial-invisibility-2013-7">computers that can crunch numbers at an unbelievable rate</a>, and super-speedy database searches. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We asked Sergeui Beloussov, serial entrepreneur and senior partner of VC fund Runa Capital, what it would take to get the average person to care about this stuff.</span></p>
<p>"The average person shouldn't care about quantum technology!" he said. "Do you care how your microwave works, or do you just care <em>that</em> it works?" He's a proponent of quantum technology that disappears into the background of whatever device you're using, leaving you free to enjoy its capabilities without worrying about the complicated math and physics that make it work.</p>
<p>Beloussov seems most intrigued by how quantum technology can change hardware companies. He used MRI design as an example: "If you've ever been in an MRI, you know it's not fun. It's noisy and you have to lay perfectly still for a long time. There's no reason for MRIs to suck like this. We could use quantum technology <a href="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/apr/24/atomic-magnetometer-is-most-sensitive-yet">like an atomic magnetometer</a> to shrink down the components of an MRI machine until they're so small and affordable that there's one in every doctor's office."</p>
<p>Perhaps the sexiest application of quantum technology is in computing. A quantum computer is one that uses quantum bits, called qubits, instead of standard bits to interact with information. Where the bits in your Mac or PC can only represent a one or a zero, a quantum computer's qubits can represent a one, zero, <em>or a one and zero at the same time</em>. This enables the computer to perform many calculations at once, significantly reducing the time required to solve a problem.</p>
<p>A computer that can carry out multiple operations at a time represents a great leap forward. Suddenly artificial intelligence can be a little less artificial. Huge numbers can be factored nearly instantly, an important development for code-breaking and Internet security.</p>
<p>There's an obvious and slightly cliched question to be asked here – when will we have quantum computers on our desktops?</p>
<p>"I don't think people need their own quantum computers," said Beloussov. "Not everyone needs their own power generator. They're expensive and complicated. I imagine we will be interacting with quantum computers over our mobile devices in the future."</p>
<p>It might not always be clear where quantum technologies will find their most pertinent applications, but scientists are staunch advocates that they should be fervently investigated.</p>
<p>Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle put it this way during a conference panel: "People in the entertainment industry didn't discover lasers for DVDs and BluRays. That was the work of scientists. Dentists didn't discover X-rays for improved medical imaging. That was the work of scientists."</p>
<p><span>Harvard professor Misha Lukin told us that "not only should scientists be allowed to investigate technologies that might not have an obvious application, they should be </span><em>encouraged</em><span> to do so. Improved clocks are an important part of driverless cars. Improved sensors make it easier to find cancer. When you build a bridge to an uninhabited island, people move there, build houses, and start an economy. We're building these bridges."</span></p>
<p><span>It's obvious that quantum technology will radically transform a number of fields from medicine to cryptography to others that we haven't even anticipated yet. The only question: will you be ready for it?</span></p>
<p><span><em><strong>Disclosure</strong>: Our trip to <keyword id="6356806" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Moscow">Moscow</keyword>, including travel and lodging expenses, was sponsored by the Russian Quantum Center.</em></span></p>

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