Quantum computing: A tech race Europe could win?

Quantum computing: A tech race Europe could win?5 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleJohn LaurensonTechnology Reporter, ParisAlice & BobA technician works on the cryostat that cools the Alice & Bob quantum computerIn a lab on the western edge of Paris, where the River Seine flows wide and trams slide past glass-fronted buildings and blossoming cherry trees, a technician called Rémi makes some adjustments with a spanner.The machine, a cascade of gold and silver-coloured cylinders descending through a cloud of wires, is a cryostat, a device that cools so much it slows activity even at the molecular level.Minus 273 degrees Celsius in the cylinder at the bottom. A temperature at which even the tiniest particles are still. Isolation from the outside world is complete.In this cylinder is placed a small case, again of gold and silver colour, in which is inserted a chip.This chip is another, tinier box inside of which takes place the phenomenon discovered by Albert Einstein and other physicists that seems to defy the mechanics of the world we live in: the quantum leap, when particles change energy levels in ways that are predictable, reproducible and apparently impossible.Around us there are several vertical cylinders like so many different-sized water heaters. They all contain cryostats like the one Marcel is tinkering with. Oh, and these machines have another name. They are quantum computers.Alice & BobThéau Peronnin (left) and Raphaël Lescanne, the co-founders of Alice & BobThis is the French quantum computer company Alice & Bob. In the next few months it will also open a much larger facility north of Paris, costing $50m (£37m), with a test and run facility to try out bigger and bigger machines, and a clean room where it will make its own chips.Alice & Bob may sound like an ice-cream company, but the 200-strong team of 20 and 30-somethings you see buzzing around this hive of a start-up do some very serious science, and will soon, says c...