Evidence of elusive Majorana particle dies

A study that was once trumpeted as evidence for the existence of an exotic quantum state that could revolutionise computing has turned out to be anything but. A 2018 Nature paper, based on work led by researchers at a Microsoft laboratory in the Netherlands, has now been officially retracted owing to what the authors call “insufficient scientific rigour” in the original data analysis. The retraction is a setback for this approach to quantum computing, but some scientists say it should still be possible to create and study the exotic states, known as Majorana fermions, that were the subject of the research.