Chinese physicists make quantum leap

Chinese scientists have successfully revealed the mystery of the Majorana fermion, a special type of elementary particle, and their observations are likely to trigger a new round of work toward quantum computers.

In physics, the elementary particle is basic - the smallest known unit of matter. In general, each elementary particle has its own antiparticle.

Over the past eight decades, particle physicists around the world have invested a lot of energy in an effort to prove the existence of a special type of elementary particle, the Majorana fermion, or MF, which was suggested by Italian scientist Ettore Majorana in 1937.