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Hello and welcome to The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Wednesday, April 9, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Microsoft says it created a new state of matter to power quantum computers, one that's neither liquid, solid, nor gas.

It's the latest major announcement in the race to achieve a new level of computing power,

one that's exponentially faster by several magnitudes than traditional computers,

transforming drug discovery, data encryption, and artificial intelligence.

In short, helping humanity solve its most difficult scientific and environmental problems. How is this project advancing the science

of quantum computing? To dive into the science and progress, we're now joined by Chaiton Nyack,

a technical fellow in quantum hardware at Microsoft

and co-author of the study that first presented Microsoft's research in the scientific journal,

Nature.

Thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

Let's start with the basics here.

First, what is quantum computing?

It's a great question because oftentimes people think that

...