In partnership with
Quantum Campus shares the latest in quantum science and technology. Read by more than 1,900 researchers, we are always looking for news from across the country. See something interesting? Be sure to share it.
Custom materials
A team from MIT, Oak Ridge National Lab, National Lab of the Rockies, and a group of institutions across Europe introduced a novel set of beam-control algorithms for electron microscopes. Using them, the team was able to steer individual chromium atoms at a less than 20 picometer scale. They were able to precisely arrange more than 40,000 individual atoms in minutes at room temperature.
“The results demonstrate the ability to deterministically move atoms repeatedly within a material’s 3D atomic lattice,” said MIT’s Julian Klein, who conceived and directed the project. “We can reprogram materials to create defects at will, realizing entirely artificial states of matter not found in nature with a wide range of potential applications, including sensing, optical, and magnetic technologies. There are so many opportunities enabled by these techniques.”
The work included more than 30 runs of each of 10 distinct beam trajectories. It was published in Nature last week.
Image from MIT.
ADVERTISEMENT
Your inbox is full. Slack is piling up. Client messages need a response yesterday. Typing thoughtful replies to all of it takes hours you don't have.
Wispr Flow turns your voice into clean, professional text you can send the moment you stop talking. Speak like you would to a colleague — tangents and all — and get polished output. Emails, Slack, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, whatever's open.
89% of messages sent with zero edits. Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
Exciton-polaritons
University of Pennsylvania physicists produced highly nonlinear exciton-polariton quasiparticles that allow light to interact strongly enough for signal switching needed in computation. The team demonstrated all-light switching at about 2.5 femtojoules.
“Because they are charge-neutral and have zero rest mass, photons can carry information quickly over long distances with minimal loss, dominating communications technology,” said Li He, a former postdoc at Penn. “But that neutrality means they barely interact with their environment, making them bad at the sort of signal-switching logic that computers depend on.”
The team’s exciton-polaritons, meanwhile, “combine the speed of light with the strong interactions of matter.”
This work was published in Physical Review Letters.
IonQ in Boulder
IonQ announced that it intends to invest $100 million in a quantum computing research facility in Boulder, Colorado. The team expects the facility to be ready in late summer and house quantum computing systems by the end of the year. The Colorado Economic Development Council approved $2.76 million in incentives for IonQ, “conditioned on the creation of up to 150 new jobs paying an average annual wage of $168,422,” according to The Denver Post.
Google Quantum AI also established an outpost in Boulder earlier this year.
Quickbits
ADVERTISEMENT
$992 Billion in Art Could Change Hands. Why Are These 71,105 Investors Paying Close Attention?
Deloitte ran the numbers. They project UHNW art and collectibles wealth -- already at $2.5 trillion -- to hit $3.47 trillion by 2030.
The institutional world has been quietly preparing for this. Back in 2011, 25% of wealth managers surveyed offered art-related services. In 2024, 51%. Family offices now average a 13.4% allocation to art and collectibles. And it’s not just because they love art. It’s because they like the math.
These positions were built over decades through private dealer relationships most investors never had. The access just wasn't there.
Masterworks is changing that:
71,000+ investors
$1.3B deployed across 525+ artworks
29 closed sales
Net annualized returns like 16.5%, 17.6%, and 17.8%, not including those unsold.
Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.
Quantum Campus is edited by Bill Bell, a science writer and marketing consultant who has covered physics and high-performance computing for more than 25 years. Disclosure statement.
