By Phil Mercer
BBC News, Sydney
Growing up on a farm in Australia, Liam Hall was a mechanic "getting greasy, scraped knuckles", but in recent years his career has taken a more technical turn.
利亚姆·霍尔 (Liam Hall) 在澳大利亚的一个农场长大，曾是一名机械师，“指关节越来越油腻、刮伤”，但近年来，他的职业生涯发生了更加技术性的转变。
He's now the head of quantum biotechnology at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. "I've got a bit of a weird background. I always wanted to be a diesel mechanic. Doing that for a while led to wanting to do engineering at university. That introduced me to the physics, and then to the quantum physics. A rollercoaster ride is a good way to describe it," he says.
他现在是澳大利亚国家科学机构 CSIRO 量子生物技术的负责人。 “我的背景有点奇怪。我一直想成为一名柴油机械师。这样做了一段时间后，我想在大学做工程学。这让我接触到了物理学，然后又接触了量子物理学。坐过山车是描述它的一个好方法，”他说。
His team has been developing diagnostic technologies, experimenting with micro sensors crafted from tiny slivers of diamonds about 50 nanometers in size (about 1,000 times finer than human hair) to test patients' iron levels. Current methods monitor a protein known as ferritin, the body's iron storage mechanism. While monitoring ferritin is a good way to measure iron, it would be more accurate to measure the actual iron levels inside the protein. One way to do that would be to measure the tiny magnetic fields generated by the iron. But there's one big problem with that approach.
他的团队一直在开发诊断技术，试验用尺寸约为 50 纳米（比人类头发细约 1,000 倍）的微小钻石片制成的微型传感器来测试患者的铁水平。目前的方法监测一种称为铁蛋白的蛋白质，它是人体的铁储存机制。虽然监测铁蛋白是测量铁的好方法，但测量蛋白质内的实际铁水平会更准确。一种方法是测量铁产生的微小磁场。但这种方法有一个大问题。
“The magnetic field” is completely tiny and outside the measurement of any traditional magnetometers or microscopes," explains Dr Hall. However, Dr Hall's nano-scale quantum sensors can detect those tiny fields and measure them. He says in the future, the technology could develop an early flag for any particular disease, including the surveillance of certain hormones or proteins that might indicate cancer. "The advantage for quantum systems has always been that you can achieve much, much better sensitivity and easier identification of chemicals at a much lower cost," Dr Hall says. "Quantum is one of Australia's most promising growth opportunities - a chance to create new markets, new applications," said CSIRO's chief scientist, Prof Bronwyn Fox.
“磁场”非常小，超出了任何传统磁力计或显微镜的测量范围，”霍尔博士解释道。然而，霍尔博士的纳米级量子传感器可以检测这些微小磁场并进行测量。他说，在未来，这项技术可以为任何特定疾病开发出早期标志，包括监测可能预示癌症的某些激素或蛋白质。“量子系统的优势始终是，您可以以更低的成本获得更好的灵敏度和更容易的化学物质识别。霍尔博士说。“量子是澳大利亚最有前途的增长机会之一——一个创造新市场、新应用的机会，”CSIRO 首席科学家 Bronwyn Fox 教授说。
Quantum mechanics emerged in the early 20th Century from studies of nature's smallest objects. Scientists believe it has the potential to expand our understanding of the universe and solve complex problems at lightning speeds. The range of applications appears vast; from advances in environmental science and decarbonisation, to cyber-security and new medicines. There could be molecules that "eat up carbon" and remove it from the atmosphere, quantum batteries to power cars, aircraft that are designed to lower their emissions and transport logistics to reduce road congestion. One ambition of quantum research is to harness the power of sub-atomic particles to store and process data.
量子力学诞生于 20 世纪初，源于对自然界最小物体的研究。科学家相信它有潜力扩大我们对宇宙的理解并以闪电般的速度解决复杂的问题。应用范围似乎很广；从环境科学和脱碳的进步，到网络安全和新药物。可能存在“吞噬碳”并将其从大气中去除的分子，为汽车、飞机提供动力的量子电池，旨在降低排放，以及减少道路拥堵的运输物流。量子研究的目标之一是利用亚原子粒子的力量来存储和处理数据。
While conventional computing generally uses bits (zeroes and ones), quantum computers use qubits, which can exist as zeroes, ones, or combinations of both at once. This is where things can get a bit strange, where particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously (this is called superposition), and also be intertwined (or entangled) with each other.
传统计算通常使用二进制（零和一），而量子计算机使用量子位，它可以零、一或同时存在两者的组合。这就是事情变得有点奇怪的地方，粒子可以同时存在于多种状态（这称为叠加），并且还相互缠绕（或纠缠）。
"Using that principle of quantum superposition together with another quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, it enables you to perform calculations that are simply impossible using conventional computers. It opens up the possibility of doing some quite amazing calculations that can be world changing," explains Prof Andrew Dzurak from the University of New South Wales.
“将量子叠加原理与另一种称为纠缠的量子现象结合使用，它使您能够执行使用传统计算机根本无法完成的计算。它开辟了进行一些非常惊人的计算的可能性，这些计算可以改变世界，”教授解释道新南威尔士大学的安德鲁·祖拉克 (Andrew Dzurak)。
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