Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Lecture at the conference "Von unscharfen Größen und verschränkten Teilchen
Aufbruch ins nächste Quantenjahrhundert", February 5, 2026.
The UN declared 2025 the World Year of Quantum Science due to a major conceptual shift in our understanding of quantum theory in the past thirty years. This change in perspective and research focus is so dramatic that it is termed the Second Quantum Revolution. The key new insight is that the processing of information using the weird features of quantum theory can be uniquely powerful, leading most notably to a worldwide effort to demonstrate a large-scale quantum computer, with capabilities far beyond any current machines. More generally, there is a new impetus to think of quantum systems in terms of their ability to extract from and about the environment information that was previously beyond our reach. In this new quantum information science, the features of the theory which Einstein decried, particularly entanglement, are seen as resources to be harnessed for information-related tasks. No longer are the uncertainty principle or the randomness of quantum systems seen purely as limiting properties, but rather as properties of nature which can be exploited to advance scientific knowledge and even economic/social good. I will survey these extraordinary developments at a non-technical level, attempting to explain the basic concepts and their significance.
A. Douglas Stone is Carl A. Morse Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University, and Deputy Director of the Yale Quantum Institute. He has done pioneering research on the quantum physics of electrical circuits and has made fundamental contributions to laser physics. His book, Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian, was selected as the 2013 science book of the year by National Public Radio. He has lectured widely to diverse audiences about Einstein’s science and the Second Quantum Revolution.
Lecture at the conference "Von unscharfen Größen und verschränkten Teilchen
Aufbruch ins nächste Quantenjahrhundert", February 5, 2026.
The UN declared 2025 the World Year of Quantum Science due to a major conceptual shift in our understanding of quantum theory in the past thirty years. This change in perspective and research focus is so dramatic that it is termed the Second Quantum Revolution. The key new insight is that the processing of information using the weird features of quantum theory can be uniquely powerful, leading most notably to a worldwide effort to demonstrate a large-scale quantum computer, with capabilities far beyond any current machines. More generally, there is a new impetus to think of quantum systems in terms of their ability to extract from and about the environment information that was previously beyond our reach. In this new quantum information science, the features of the theory which Einstein decried, particularly entanglement, are seen as resources to be harnessed for information-related tasks. No longer are the uncertainty principle or the randomness of quantum systems seen purely as limiting properties, but rather as properties of nature which can be exploited to advance scientific knowledge and even economic/social good. I will survey these extraordinary developments at a non-technical level, attempting to explain the basic concepts and their significance.
A. Douglas Stone is Carl A. Morse Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University, and Deputy Director of the Yale Quantum Institute. He has done pioneering research on the quantum physics of electrical circuits and has made fundamental contributions to laser physics. His book, Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian, was selected as the 2013 science book of the year by National Public Radio. He has lectured widely to diverse audiences about Einstein’s science and the Second Quantum Revolution.
