Fumfer Physics 18: Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling and the Engineering of Quantum Reality
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/09
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their pioneering work on macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in electrical circuits. Their achievement bridges theory and engineering by revealing quantum behavior in large, engineered systems—once thought confined to atomic scales. This experimental triumph laid groundwork for quantum computing, where maintaining fragile quantum states enables calculations beyond classical limits. Their work embodies the precision and universality of quantum mechanics, a cornerstone of modern physics and technology, reaffirming its supremacy in explaining nature’s smallest and now, surprisingly, larger scales.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s arguably the most controversial Nobel. All right, moving on—the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in electrical circuits. So, basically, large-scale quantum effects. Where does IC fit into this?
Rick Rosner: Not a great start for IC—nowhere special, really. These laureates demonstrated quantum mechanical behavior at a macroscopic scale, meaning they were able to make quantum effects visible in larger, engineered systems. In physics, regardless of the theoretical framework, everything must ultimately incorporate quantum mechanics. It’s one of the most precise, elegant, and experimentally verified theories ever developed.
The two great pillars of physics—quantum mechanics and general relativity—don’t naturally agree. We’ve spent a century trying to unify them, and so far, they remain mathematically incompatible. But if you had to pick the more universally confirmed theory, quantum mechanics wins by sheer volume of experimental validation.
General relativity, which describes the curvature of spacetime and gravity’s effect on matter, is tested in phenomena like gravitational lensing, black holes, and especially GPS systems. A satellite’s onboard clock experiences weaker gravity than a clock on Earth’s surface, so time ticks faster in orbit. GPS accounts for this relativistic time dilation every second—if it didn’t, your phone’s location would drift kilometers off within minutes.
Still, quantum mechanics has been tested with even greater precision. Every semiconductor, laser, and MRI machine relies on it. Any new theory of physics must preserve quantum mechanics or reproduce its predictions—otherwise it’s immediately wrong.
So, what Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis achieved was engineering. They took phenomena that normally vanish into background noise—microscopic quantum fluctuations—and made them observable at the macroscopic level. That’s a stunning experimental feat. It’s the same conceptual ground as quantum computing, where researchers isolate and stabilize “qubits” long enough to perform meaningful computation.
Quantum states are fragile; they tend to collapse into classical states when exposed to heat, light, or vibration—what’s called decoherence. But by building exquisitely precise systems, you can preserve quantum indeterminacy long enough to exploit it for calculations that classical computers would take millennia to complete.
In short: these physicists didn’t just observe quantum weirdness—they built machines that use it. They turned the abstract mathematics of quantum mechanics into tangible engineering. That’s what makes the discovery worthy of a Nobel.
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