In a thin film of superconductor, bursts of electric current appear from time to time. They look like fingerprints, but whose — not immediately clear. Some are left by mysterious particles that could become the basis of a reliable quantum computer. Others are just bumps in the material, duds.
Scientists measured these bursts with a very sensitive microscope at temperatures near absolute zero. They decomposed each burst into simple bell-shaped curves, like breaking a complex chord into individual notes. Then the computer, without any hints, sorted thousands of such "chords" into groups.
It turned out that real particle fingerprints gather into neat circles — vortices in the superconductor. Meanwhile, fake signals are scattered randomly, near cracks and defects. Before, they could be confused; now, they can't.
This approach is like sorting mail: the machine learns to distinguish important envelopes from junk mail, even if they look similar. Now scientists have a reliable filter. With it, the search for particles for quantum computers will become more accurate and faster.
The temperature at which the microscope operated was only a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero — colder than outer space.
The search for Majorana fermions echoes the plot of 'Star Trek', where heroes seek stable particles for a warp drive.