by A fragile quantum memory state has been held stable at room temperature for a "world record" 39 minutes - overcoming a key barrier to ultrafast computers.
"Qubits" of information encoded in a silicon system persisted for almost 100 times longer than ever before.
Quantum systems are notoriously fickle to measure and manipulate, but if harnessed could transform computing.
The new benchmark was set by an international team led by Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Prior to the new research result, the previous best figure was 25 seconds at room temperature, or 3 minutes under cryogenic conditions.
The abstract of the paper, published in Science, can be read here.
