Question: what made you so intrested in laser diamands and how are you planning on making a computer?

Philip Dolan answered on 20 Jun 2011:

Hello! Well, actually lots of scientists were already very interested in this idea (it’s not mine at all!). It was when I read a description of the project online that I became interested. I decided to apply to do this project as my PhD, and my supervisor thought I did well enough in the interview to accept me.

It sounds like a fascinating idea, and I was really interested in this area of physics anyway (known as ‘quantum information processing’). It’s really complicated to explain how we’ll end up making the computer, but it’d involve shooting green lasers at things known as ‘colour centres’ within the diamond. These colour centres can sometimes make diamonds look like they have a colour, and it’s ones that make the diamond look pink that we think might make a ‘quantum computer’.