Martynas Skrabulis

Inside a tiny crystal, sound is trapped like light in a mirrored room. It bounces off the walls and forms standing waves — a multitude of harmonic oscillations, each with its own frequency. Physicists have learned to use these oscillations as qubits — the basic units of quantum information.

An ordinary sensor is like a scale that always shakes a little on its own. Even in total silence and at zero temperature, every particle jitters — this is quantum jitter, and it limits the precision of any measurement.