Prof Andrew Steane

Abstract:

This book is a presentation of science for the general reader, with an emphasis on correcting widely held misconceptions, and a call to liberate science from 'private ownership' in cultural terms. The heart of the book is about offering to the next generation a balanced and liberating view of their own moral stature. Quantum fields and the physics of the early universe are described in non-technical language, showing what science can and cannot say about origins. Darwinian evolution is then discussed, giving due weight both to variation and to the constraints which shape the possible outcomes. It is argued that there is no good reason to think that human judgements about ethics are driven largely by instinct. The capacities of living things, including reason and moral and aesthetic judgement in humans, are not mere instincts dictated by reproductive success, but rather abilities to perceive what is so. The other liberation the book seeks, or offers, is towards saying that science is a universal, a part of our common inheritance, and not the property of just one world-view calling itself 'scientific'. Any world-view has, built into its character, a set of values, and these cannot be derived from science but rather underpin it. The scientific community can and should make clear, in particular, that Darwinian evolution does not overturn what lies at the root of a religious response to the world.

Abstract:

Robust qubit memory is essential for quantum computing, both for near-term devices operating without error correction, and for the long-term goal of a fault-tolerant processor. We directly measure the memory error ε_{m} for a ^{43}Ca^{+} trapped-ion qubit in the small-error regime and find ε_{m}<10^{-4} for storage times t≲50  ms. This exceeds gate or measurement times by three orders of magnitude. Using randomized benchmarking, at t=1  ms we measure ε_{m}=1.2(7)×10^{-6}, around ten times smaller than that extrapolated from the T_{2}^{*} time, and limited by instability of the atomic clock reference used to benchmark the qubit.