Microsoft and quantum computing: new doubts about its great promise

Microsoft has been promising for years that its quantum computing approach, based on a strange particle called the Majorana, is going to revolutionize computing. But a scientist from the University of St Andrews has just published an article in the prestigious journal Nature that casts doubt on its results. The researcher, Henry Legg, assures that the software Microsoft used to verify its research contained errors and was not accurate enough. According to him, the company has not proven to have created the Majorana particle, which is the key to its entire system. In his own words: “Microsoft said it had built the equivalent of a precision Swiss watch, but when I opened the box to examine the mechanism, I found a chaos of pieces that did not fit together.” For its part, Microsoft defends its results and assures that skepticism is part of the scientific process. The company says it is sharing all its data with the United States defense agency (DARPA) so that it can be evaluated independently. Meanwhile, quantum computing remains a fascinating promise: computers capable of solving in seconds problems that current ones would take thousands of years to solve. But first, you have to make sure they really work. — Marta, for intermittent intelligence.