Quantum

Quantum technology in plain English: qubits, computing, sensing and networks, with a focus on measured results and the obstacles to useful machines.

materials characterisation

+12

Your Worst Qubit Decides What Your Computer Can Do

Oct 7, 2026

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7 min read

Your Worst Qubit Decides What Your Computer Can Do

A multi-laboratory study hid the performance data from the people examining the chips. The features that decided whether a qubit was any good are a few nanometres across.

Quobly

A Normal Chip Factory Just Made Working Qubits

Sep 23, 2026

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6 min read

A Normal Chip Factory Just Made Working Qubits

Quobly says a single chip made on STMicroelectronics' standard 300 mm production line performed qubit readout plus single- and two-qubit gates. The milestone is not the qubit count. It is the attempt to turn quantum hardware from craft production into semiconductor manufacturing.

Science Tokyo

The Quantum Sensor That Can Hear the Body Without Liquid Helium

Aug 24, 2026

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5 min read

The Quantum Sensor That Can Hear the Body Without Liquid Helium

Your heart and brain give off magnetic fields a billionth the strength of the Earth's. Reading them today needs a room full of liquid helium and costs millions. A team in Tokyo built a diamond sensor that works at room temperature, two millimetres from the skin, on a tenth of the usual laser power. Here is what changed, and what still has to be proved.

Space

Aug 23, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Six days, six long-reads from the frontier, plus a featured story on orbital surveillance going mass-market. A quantum sensor that can touch a patient, gene editing reaching a cell it never could, and two bodies flown around the Moon.

Quantum

Aug 17, 2026

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5 min read

The Repeater That Could Turn City Fiber Into a Quantum Internet

A quantum internet needs a device that has never really existed: a repeater that can pass entanglement along a line without destroying it. In 2026 the first ones started working, over the same city fibre that carries your video calls. Here is what changed, and how far it still has to go.

Space

Aug 16, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Next week on The Signal: a quantum internet, living-bacteria implants, drones that navigate by ear, AI-run cyberattacks, disposable satellites, and a salt battery, plus a featured read on where vertical-AI money is flowing.

Photonic Computing

A Quantum Computer Built for the Data Centre, and It Runs on Light

Aug 11, 2026

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6 min read

A Quantum Computer Built for the Data Centre, and It Runs on Light

The quantum computers you have seen in photos hang inside a giant refrigerator chilled colder than deep space. A wave of photonic machines just skipped the fridge entirely, sliding into ordinary server racks and running on particles of light, and the shape of the machine may end up mattering more than the qubit count everyone quotes.

Space

Aug 9, 2026

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3 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Alien megastructures, a quantum computer that runs on light, a battery that rusts on purpose, and a living robot. Your first look at next week.

Frontier Signal

The Navigation System That Works When GPS Goes Dark

Aug 7, 2026

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4 min read

The Navigation System That Works When GPS Goes Dark

GPS can be jammed with a cheap transmitter, and increasingly is. Quantum sensors are being tested as a backup that navigates using the Earth's magnetic and gravitational fingerprints, signals no satellite jammer can switch off.

Space

The Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Jul 19, 2026

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2 min read

The Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday. Here is your first taste of each.

spoofing

+11

GPS Isn't About Maps. It's About Time, and That's the Problem.

Jul 18, 2026

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5 min read

GPS Isn't About Maps. It's About Time, and That's the Problem.

Ask anyone what GPS is for and they will say maps. Its real job is telling the time, and it does that job for the power grid, the stock market and the mobile network. The signal is fainter than a distant lightbulb. The fix is quantum, and the clock is already running.

Space

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Jul 12, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Mind-reading AI, a chip that writes DNA, one free download that drives 20 robots, and the signal holding up civilisation. Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.

Space

Jul 5, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Six spoilers- for next week's deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.

Space

AI Can Now Spot Cancer Years Before You'd Feel It

Jul 3, 2026

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6 min read

AI Can Now Spot Cancer Years Before You'd Feel It

Plus: China's eerily lifelike humanoid, why bosses say data (not models) is the moat against LLMs, Russia's $60B bid to become SpaceX, home batteries turned power plants, and the Pentagon's encryption countdown.

Quantum

Jul 2, 2026

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4 min read

Deep Signal for the day - Quantum's hardest problem just became a free download.

Taming the errors that plague quantum computers has always meant exotic hardware and a physics PhD. On 29 June, IBM shipped a different kind of answer a free Qiskit add-on called Paulice that any developer can bolt onto a circuit in a few lines. It doesn't fix quantum's flaw. But where it points is the real story.

AI for science

+18

Can AI Actually Do Science? A Brutal New Test Keeps Score

Jul 2, 2026

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8 min read

Can AI Actually Do Science? A Brutal New Test Keeps Score

Plus: robots learning to feel, a contested claim to have built life from scratch, China's fusion-magnet milestone, a tiny engine aimed at Mars, and quantum error-fixing as a free download.

Space

+22

The Future of Video Editing? Tell Google's AI What to Change — and It Does It

Jul 1, 2026

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8 min read

The Future of Video Editing? Tell Google's AI What to Change — and It Does It

Plus: a humanoid robot pulls a multi-day shift, a monthly shot that silences a gene, a battery made of CO2, NASA's private cargo run to the Moon, and a quantum computer that fits in a server rack.

SMR

+23

A Robot Tow-Truck Launches Today to Save a Falling NASA Telescope

Jun 30, 2026

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8 min read

A Robot Tow-Truck Launches Today to Save a Falling NASA Telescope

Plus: NVIDIA hands AI agents a real science lab, robots learn from video games, a world-first cell therapy cracks a solid tumour, a walk-away-safe reactor finds a grid partner, and an AI designs quantum codes humans couldn't.

direct air capture

+21

The Machines Sucking CO2 From the Sky Just Got Real — and Cheaper

Jun 29, 2026

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7 min read

The Machines Sucking CO2 From the Sky Just Got Real — and Cheaper

Plus: Washington gates the most powerful AI, a humanoid takes a real shift at BMW, an AI-designed antibody clears its first human safety test, the next Starship lights up, and quantum hits a real milestone.

Space

+18

The Signal — America's quantum moonshot, and the quiet race to lock your data first

Jun 26, 2026

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10 min read

The Signal — America's quantum moonshot, and the quiet race to lock your data first

A US executive order pours the government into quantum computing — and braces for the day it breaks today's encryption. Plus five more signals from the frontier.

gene-editing medicine

+33

The Signal — The $20,000 home robot has arrived, with a human quietly on call

Jun 25, 2026

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12 min read

The Signal — The $20,000 home robot has arrived, with a human quietly on call

A walking humanoid you can buy for your living room is shipping this year — but the laundry-folding demo hides a remote helper. Plus six more signals from the frontier.

Space

+26

The Signal — A battery of iron and air could be clean energy's missing piece

Jun 24, 2026

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10 min read

The Signal — A battery of iron and air could be clean energy's missing piece

Cheap storage that lasts days, not hours, is the part that finally lets a grid run on sun and wind — plus five more signals from the frontier.

R-noid

+19

The Signal — AI is now hunting bugs in the code the whole internet runs on

Jun 23, 2026

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10 min read

The Signal — AI is now hunting bugs in the code the whole internet runs on

For two years the fear was AI helping hackers. Now it's patching the open-source code almost everything online depends on — plus six more signals from the frontier.

Space

+14

The Signal — A robot is flying across the Pacific to rescue a NASA telescope

Jun 22, 2026

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9 min read

The Signal — A robot is flying across the Pacific to rescue a NASA telescope

Launch is becoming routine. The new frontier in space is keeping, moving and rescuing what's already up there — plus six more signals.