002 Will Britain be first to build a really useful quantum computer?

Will Britain be first to build a really useful quantum computer? And why is Microsoft trying to tie knots in spacetime? Plus quantum Brexit, quantum news, quantum questions, the Stupid Qubit Adiabatic Award and a song about ion trap qubits. In this episode, we learn all about Microsoft's bid to build weird qubits that seem to be both Lego bricks and loom bands. Then we find out about NQIT, the UK's collaborative effort to build a quantum computer, as well as chatting to Professor Winfried Hensinger at the University of Sussex – who was inspired by Star Trek to build a warp-speed quantum computer for Britain. And Professor Simon Benjamin at the University of Oxford is back, along with Junior Research Fellow Dr Vera Shäfer, to tell us how the UK's on the verge of unveiling a modular quantum computer based on levitating ions in a vacuum and linking them up with light particles - and what it might be able to do. Or not.