A quiet thunder in the lab: how three physicists nudged the world toward a quantum tomorrow
On a gray morning in Stockholm, where the Baltic water glints like brushed steel, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced what felt like both the end of a long experiment and the opening of a new chapter: John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
It’s an achievement that reads like a blend of thought experiment and hard wiring — the kind of discovery you expect to find in chalk-stained notebooks and late-night lab benches rather than in ordinary life. And yet its implications are already threading into the fabric of our daily future: stronger quantum sensors, more secure communications, and the tantalizing, sometimes terrifying promise of quantum computers.
A scene from the lab
Imagine a corridor lit by fluorescent tubes, the hum of cryogenic refrigerators, and a tangle of coaxial cables glinting like the arteries of a modern cathedral. That’s the landscape of circuit quantum electrodynamics and superconducting qubits — where these laureates spent decades turning abstract quantum quirks into phenomena you can measure in a lab.
“We felt, early on, that the unusual could be coaxed into the ordinary,” says Michel Devoret in a voice that suggests both mischief and method. “That a circuit could behave like a tiny atom, showing discrete energy jumps, was thrilling. But what kept us going was the idea that we could build technologies from those jumps.”
John Clarke, who has made a career of measuring the almost immeasurable, remembers the first time he and students saw signatures of macroscopic tunnelling in their instruments. “It’s like hearing a whisper from the quantum world,” he says. “You know something fundamental is happening, and for a moment you feel like a medium translating between two realities.”
Why this matters: from tunnelling to technologies
The prize citation may sound esoteric — macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit — but underneath it sits a practical engine. When circuits show quantised energy levels and can tunnel between states on a scale large enough to manipulate, they become the building blocks of quantum technologies.
Experts say that these principles are foundational to superconducting qubits, one of the leading architectures in the race to build scalable quantum computers. While a useful quantum computer that outperforms classical machines on broad, useful tasks is not yet here, progress has accelerated: error rates have dropped, coherence times have improved, and companies and national labs are investing billions.
“This isn’t just about bragging rights,” says Dr. Amina Koroma, a quantum information scientist in Geneva. “These experiments turned what were once philosophical curiosities into devices that could measure gravity waves, detect tiny magnetic fields in the brain, and eventually break — or protect — encryption. The societal implications are enormous.”
Numbers that ground the dream
To put the scale in perspective: the Nobel physics prize this year carries a total award of 11 million Swedish crowns (around €1.04m, roughly $1.1m), to be shared among the three winners. Nobel laureates enter a lineage dating back to 1901, with physics names like Einstein, Marie Curie and Niels Bohr — figures who reshaped how humanity understands reality.
Last year’s prize, awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for breakthroughs in machine learning, served as a reminder of how fundamental research can unexpectedly reshape economies, politics and public life — and how scientists often wrestle with the ethical fallout of their breakthroughs. Quantum technologies are likely to present the same tangled promise and peril.
Voices from the community
In a small café near a Cambridge lab, a graduate student who has been living off instant coffee and 3 a.m. code told me, “This prize is validation. Not just for the three of them, but for the hundred-thousand small choices that the lab community makes. It’s for the students who keep showing up.” Her eyes lit up at the thought of what comes next.
A Swedish Academy official, speaking from Stockholm, framed the award in national and cultural terms. “The Nobel Prize has always been about the curiosity that drives mankind,” she said. “From Alfred Nobel’s will to today, physics holds a special place in that story. It’s fitting that this year’s prize goes to research that sits squarely between the conceptual and the utilitarian.”
Even outside the ivory towers, the news rippled. A small start-up founder in Tel Aviv, whose company develops quantum-safe encryption, responded by texting, “We need a new generation of engineers. This recognition brings attention — and hopefully funding — to the field.” A municipal official in San Francisco mused, “If quantum sensors become affordable, imagine the environmental monitoring we could do.”
Local color: Nobel week and Swedish ritual
Each December 10 in Stockholm, the laureates will step into a ritual that few other professions enjoy: the Nobel ceremony in the blue-hued, torch-lit Stockholm Concert Hall, followed by a banquet in the city hall’s ornate Red Hall. The prize money, the medals, the speeches — they are theater and reckoning at once.
Outside the ceremony halls, the city hums with festive precision: reindeer dishes in restaurant windows, the smell of cinnamon buns (kanelbullar) in the air, and a sense of history bundled with a slightly modern edge. For scientists, the ceremony is both a coronation and a call to responsibility.
Looking outward: the geopolitics and ethics of quantum
There is a global scramble underway. Nations pour resources into quantum research because the technology promises secure communications, superior sensors for navigation and defense, and computational power that could transform materials science and pharmaceuticals. That raises inevitable questions: Who controls these technologies? How do we protect privacy when encryption can be broken? How do we keep an open international scientific community while competing for strategic advantage?
“Scientific recognition is also a political signal,” remarks Professor Luis Herrera, a historian of science. “By honoring work that underpins quantum technologies, the Nobel Committee is spotlighting a field at the crossroads of innovation, security and public life.”
What should we expect next?
For readers watching the horizon, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Quantum technologies move from the lab to the market slowly but steadily; practical, wide-use quantum computers remain a medium-term prospect.
- Quantum cryptography and quantum sensors are already finding niche, then broader, applications—from secure communication links to medical imaging enhancements.
- Governments and private investors will likely amplify funding; the challenge will be to balance rapid development with ethical frameworks and international cooperation.
So, what do you think? Should breakthroughs like this be raced, regulated, or shared openly? The question is not academic — it will shape whether quantum technologies become a force for shared progress or a new frontier of inequality.
Closing: a prize that celebrates curiosity — and responsibility
There is an old phrase in physics: “Nature is subtle, but not malicious.” The Nobel Prize this year honors three people who taught instruments to ask nature its quietest questions and then listened. As the laureates prepare for December’s ceremony and a world waits for the next wave of quantum-enabled tools, we should carry both wonder and caution.
These discoveries do more than decorate CVs. They invite a society-wide conversation: about the kinds of futures we choose to build, who gets to build them, and how we make sure the next quantum leap serves everyone. If curiosity started this story, responsibility must write the sequel.
