Three scientists awarded the 2025 Physics Nobel for developing device that demonstrates quantum tunneling
These circuits could potentially form the basis of useful, highly efficient quantum computers in the future, as well as advanced quantum sensors.
The Physics Nobel 2025 has been awarded this year to three scientists whose experiments provided greater insight into the strange quantum world. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said: “The three Nobel Prize winners 2025, John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis, have opened the door to the world of the ultra-small, where individual particles can act in ways that contradict classical physics and common sense.” One of the Nobel Prize in Physics effects is “tunnelling”, which essentially means that the particles are able to pass through barriers that stop other objects in their path. To offer a comparison, it’s as if a cricket ball that has been bowled hits the pitch and, instead of bouncing up as expected, it tunnellers straight into the ground. The three scientists showed that it was possible to control a group of particles and make the group as a whole demonstrate this tunnelling effect.
Inspired by some of the early discoveries in quantum tunnelling device that led to transistors and silicon chips in the 1950s, the scientists constructed an electrical circuit out of two superconductors, which are able to carry an electrical current without resistance. In between the superconductors, they placed a thin non-conducting layer, called a Josephson junction. Using this circuit, they demonstrated that the charged particles in the superconductors can move in unison, such that the particle can be said to be a single particle extended across the entire circuit.
The scientists then showed that this single particle could be made to flow without any voltage, in other words it could mimic the flow of current, in a way that seems to contradict the laws of electricity. Scientific innovation 2025 formed the basis of the first superconducting circuits. These superconducting circuits are now considered to be the fundamental components of quantum computers and quantum sensors, which are the key to the next generation of computing, communication and measuring technologies. Quantum mechanics breakthrough differ from traditional computers in the way that they use quantum bits or qubits, which can take on many values at the same time.
