The researchers seized on theoretical physics papers suggesting a way to build qubits that would make them more dependable. Microsoft got interested in Majoranas after company researchers in 2004 approached tech strategy chief Craig Mundie and said they had a way to solve one problem holding back quantum computers-qubitsвЂ™ flakiness. Physicists wouldnвЂ™t report a good glimpse of one of his eponymous particles until the next millennium, in KouwenhovenвЂ™s lab. Not long after, he boarded a ship and was never seen again. Majorana fermions are named after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, who hypothesized in 1937 that particles should exist with the odd property of being their own antiparticles. вЂњFrom the fuller data, thereвЂ™s no doubt that thereвЂ™s no Majorana.вЂќ An attached note from the authors said the original paper, in the prestigious journal Nature, would be retracted, citing вЂњtechnical errors.вЂќ It concludes that they did not find the prized particle after all. Late last month, Kouwenhoven and his 21 coauthors released a new paper including more data from their experiments. Three years later, MicrosoftвЂ™s 2018 physics fillip has fizzled. The companyвЂ™s director of quantum computing business development, Julie Love, told the BBC that Microsoft would have a commercial quantum computer вЂњwithin five years.вЂќ KouwenhovenвЂ™s discovery buoyed MicrosoftвЂ™s chance to catch up. Rivals IBM and Google had already built impressive prototypes using more established technology. Microsoft hoped to harness Majorana particles to build a quantum computer, which promises unprecedented power by tapping quirky physics. In March 2018, Dutch physicist and Microsoft employee Leo Kouwenhoven published headline-grabbing new evidence that he had observed an elusive particle called a Majorana fermion.

Big win quantum error after all