Quantum dreams: What the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics and others tells us about the future we are building

Monday 20 October 2025

In an era when artificial intelligence writes code, spacecraft explore the icy moons of Jupiter, and quantum computers gets one step closer every day to solving problems once deemed philosophical only, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 arrives like a quiet reminder of how far human curiosity has carried us, write Lala Rukh, Abdul Fatah and Muhammad Mohsin.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the prize to John Clarke, Michel H Devoret and John M Martinis for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit carried during the series of experiments in 1984 and 1985.

It may sound abstract, but their achievement captures the essence of 21st century science: turning the mysteries of nature into instruments of possibility.

Mysterious branch of science

For most of the 20th century, quantum physics was treated as a mysterious branch of science describing things too small and fragile for ordinary experience. It governed electrons, photons, and the behaviour of single molecules. It told us that particles can be waves, that they can exist in two states at once, and that they sometimes tunnel through barriers as if they were ghosts.

When you throw a ball at a wall, you can be sure it will bounce back at you. You would be extremely surprised if the ball suddenly appeared on the other side of a solid wall. This is exactly the type of phenomenon that has given quantum physics a reputation for being bizarre and unintuitive. Image: © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

But circuits, machines, and other macroscopic systems belonged firmly to the classical world of Newton, where things behave predictably. The work of Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis dissolved this divide. They proved that quantum effects do not end at the atomic scale. They can persist in systems made of billions of atoms, provided those systems are isolated, cooled, and designed with exquisite precision.

Josephson junction

The laureates achieved this by studying superconducting circuits, in which electric current flows without resistance at temperatures near absolute zero. These circuits include a tiny part called a Josephson junction, a thin barrier separating two superconductors that allows pairs of electrons to tunnel through quantum mechanically. When arranged carefully, such junctions can behave as artificial atoms with discrete energy levels.

In a normal conductor, the electrons jostle with each other and with the material. When a material becomes a superconductor, the electrons join up as pairs, Cooper pairs, and form a current where there is no resistance. The gap in the illustration marks the Josephson junction. Cooper pairs can behave as if they were all a single particle that fills the entire electrical circuit. Quantum mechanics describes this collective state using a shared wave function. The properties of this wave function play the leading role in the laureates’ experiment. Image: © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The researchers were able to see quantum tunnelling of current and measure the energy quantisation of the circuit itself. This means an entire electrical circuit was behaving like a quantum particle. In a single stroke, the microscopic and macroscopic worlds were joined by experiment rather than imagination.

Image: © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The acknowledgment to this achievement is not only a triumph of experimental ingenuity but a symbol of how far science has come. The ability to manipulate quantum states in circuits laid the groundwork for superconducting qubits, the building blocks of today’s quantum computers. These qubits are now developed by big research laboratories and technology companies, including Google, IBM, and others.

Technological transformation

A line can be drawn directly from the laboratory demonstrations of Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis to the global race to build machines capable of calculations beyond the reach of any classical computer. The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics therefore celebrates not only a specific discovery but also an entire era of technological transformation that it made possible.

The moment of 2025 is one of unprecedented scientific capability. Humanity can now engineer at the scale of atoms and simulate the birth of galaxies. Artificial intelligence can design molecules, predict protein structures, and generate original artworks.

Satellites map the Earth’s atmosphere in real time. Quantum experiments probe the boundary between matter and information. Never before have we had such power to observe, model, and alter the world around us.

Yet the same technologies that bring clarity can also deepen our confusion. We can measure the smallest vibrations of the universe but still struggle to understand the social and environmental systems we inhabit. We have more data than ever before, yet our ability to act on that knowledge is uneven and often paralysed by competing priorities. This is the paradox of progress. Science today is breathtakingly capable, but capability is not the same as wisdom.

The Nobel Prize announcement invites us to pause and ask what kind of future we are building with these tools. The quantum discoveries recognised this year suggest that we are entering a time when technology will become both more invisible and more profound.

Eavesdropping on entangled particles

Computers could one day operate on principles that defy intuition, solving problems of chemistry, logistics, and climate that are intractable today. Quantum sensors may monitor the environment with sensitivity that approaches the limits set by nature itself. Quantum networks could secure communication through the very impossibility of eavesdropping on entangled particles.

These prospects inspire awe, but they also demand caution. Each technological revolution redistributes power. When knowledge becomes so advanced that only a few institutions can afford it, inequality widens. The same quantum computers that could accelerate drug discovery might also crack the cryptographic systems that protect privacy and global finance.

The future will depend not just on what scientists invent but on how societies choose to govern their inventions. The lesson of the 20th century’s atomic age remains relevant: mastery of the fundamental forces of nature does not guarantee mastery of human nature.

At a deeper level, the 2025 Nobel Prize reminds us that science is not only about control but about curiosity. The experiments that revealed quantum behaviour in circuits were not initially driven by commercial motives. They arose from a desire to test the limits of quantum mechanics itself.

How large can a system be and still behave quantum mechanically? Where exactly does the classical world begin? These are questions that echo the philosophical heart of physics, tracing back to Bohr and Schrödinger.

By demonstrating quantum effects in macroscopic circuits, Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis have shown that the boundary is far more flexible than once imagined. The universe appears seamless; it is our understanding that is compartmentalised.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M Yaghi for creating metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs.

A couple of grams of MOF-5 holds an area as big as a football pitch, which means it can absorb much more gas than a zeolite could. These tiny, sponge-like structures can trap gases, capture carbon, and even harvest water from dry air. Their work shows how chemistry can turn imagination into matter, building materials that help us clean the atmosphere, store energy, and design smarter medicines.

Image: © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Together, the three Nobel Prizes of 2025 tell one connected story. Physics reached into the quantum world to show how circuits can behave like atoms. Chemistry used that same spirit of design to build materials from the molecular level up. Medicine revealed how finely tuned the body must be to protect itself from its own defences.

Each prize celebrates a different kind of control over energy, matter, and life but all remind us that science is, at its best, a collaboration between curiosity and care. The more we learn about the universe, the more we see that progress depends on working with nature’s patterns rather than against them.

If the 20th century was defined by the splitting of the atom, the 21st century may be defined by the coherence of knowledge itself.

Uniting physics, chemistry, medicine, and the human spirit

The discoveries celebrated in 2025 from quantum circuits that capture the behaviour of atoms, to porous materials that can trap carbon, to immune cells that preserve the body’s delicate balance reveal a world that is learning to connect rather than divide. This year’s Nobel prizes show how science is becoming a shared language of understanding, uniting physics, chemistry, medicine, and the human spirit in a single story of curiosity and care.

Even the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”, echoes this theme.

His work reminds us that imagination is not separate from science; it is what gives meaning to discovery. While physicists reveal the quantum fabric of reality and chemists design its materials, writers help us make sense of what it means to live within that reality.

The 2025 Nobel season, taken together, invites us to see the future not only as a triumph of reason but as an act of storytelling, a world built through knowledge, empathy, and the enduring human desire to understand.

Authors: Lala Rukh (LinkedIn) is a doctoral researcher in MaREI–Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine Research and Innovation at the University of Galway. She is an electrical engineer and has master's degrees in energy systems and marine plastics abatement. Abdul Fatah (LinkedIn) is PhD researcher in the area quantum computing algorithms at Atlantic Technological University Galway, Ireland. Currently, he is developing new algorithms for Noisy Intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) era quantum computers as well as envision the algorithms for future fault-tolerant quantum computers. And Muhammad Mohsin (LinkedIn) is working as research assistant at eHealth-Hub for Cancer Ireland. His research aim is to improve cancer outcomes and maximise patient quality of life.