Shichuan Xue

In microchips, wires usually lie flat on the surface, like rails on the ground. But sometimes one wire needs to leap over another without touching it. For that, engineers build air bridges — thin metal arches suspended above the chip. Previously, such a bridge was assembled in several stages: deposit a layer, expose it, etch it, repeat. Each stage is a chance to mess something up.

A quantum computer is like an orchestra where every musician must play with precision down to a billionth of a second. If one instrument goes out of tune, the whole symphony collapses. So scientists spent a year watching 27 qubits — the simplest cells of quantum memory.