Quantum tech could scramble the world order. 

Shatter existing data firewalls. Make communication hack-proof. Build the world’s most powerful supercomputer. 

Welcome to what could be this century’s Manhattan Project. And is very definitely the next Space Race. 

As nations – China, the EU, US – pour in billions, India too has joined the fray. A national mission. 6,000 crore rupees. Elite scientific minds. Among them is Urbasi Sinha, heading the country’s first dedicated lab playing with quantum particles – specifically photons – at Bangalore’s Raman Research Institute. 

Quantum: the mind-bending world of counter-intuitive physics, where a subatomic particle – such as a photon, an electron – can be two things at once. A wave and a particle. An oscillation and a single point. Unlike ocean waves and X-rays. The door, a table, our phones, the planets. The classical world made up of things we can see and touch – where objects can only ever be either a wave or a particle. 

Two states of being mean unique behaviours. Namely, multiple properties – at any given time. Both here and there. Spinning clockwise and counter-clockwise. A mind-boggling spectacle that Sinha and RRI, in collaboration with France, have shown live in the lab. A global breakthrough that overturns what Neil Bohrs, a founding father of quantum, held true – that wave-and-particle-like properties could never be seen together. 

This co-existence of multiple properties means that a quantum particle’s exact state is unknown – until the very moment you observe it. Or as Sinha explains of her work, a photon will “reveal what it wants to reveal” only when you measure it. 

Another interesting quirk? They can cruise around solo, or “entangle” themselves in pairs. A peculiar phenomenon that sees two photons – and their properties – intimately linked, even if separated by billions of light-years of space. Albert Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance”.

All this makes for very interesting energy changes. Energy that already – astonishingly – undergirds most things in our modern world, from circuits to cell phones, lasers to LEDs. Now, a second quantum revolution to harness bigger energy leaps is taking place – where scientists like Sinha are getting these to-be or not-to be particles to do their bidding for far bigger, national security objectives. 

Like quantum computing. Unlike conventional computers, these run on two-state packets of data – “qubits” – which can be both 0 and 1. This gives them Flash speed. Or as Urbasi explains it, what a 50-qubit quantum computer could do in mere seconds would take an ordinary computer the age of the universe to complete. Nothing imaginable would be beyond the grasp of a quantum computer – whether cracking any encryption wide open, helping develop unique materials and drugs, or boosting the power of AI. In fact, Sinha is currently working on how to use quantum computers towards meeting the SDGs.

Or take quantum communication, another key focus area of Sinha’s work – building hack-proof communication corridors. Currently, she is heading India’s first funded project, in collaboration with ISRO, on using satellites to secure long-distance transmissions. From banking to voting, diplomacy to military programs – “a paradigm shift” in national security and global power beckons. 

Sinha’s work is putting India on the map, by demonstrating a series of “firsts”, at a time when governments and companies around the world are racing to leverage the unreal nature of quantum. IBM, for instance, has just passed the first-ever 1,000-qubit milestone. China has developed the world’s longest quantum communication network between Beijing and Shanghai. The US remains a leader in quantum sensing. 

The golden age of quantum is coming. But where lies its future: warfare or welfare? At SYNAPSE, watch Urvashi Urbasi Sinha unpack the ways in which we’re manipulating matter at the subatomic level. Its inherent contractions. Intersections with everyday life. And just like its particles, the fascinating duality of its promise – to be a springboard for social good, or the next destroyer of worlds.

 

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