By KOSTYA MANENKOV and MIKE CORDER, Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research on seemingly obscure quantum tunneling that is advancing digital technology.

Clarke, 83, conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley; Martinis at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Devoret at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Photos of John Clarke, Michel H Devoret and John M. Martinis are pictured on a screen after they were announced as winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (Christine Olsson/TT News Agency via AP)

“To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” Clarke told reporters at the announcement by phone after being told of his win.

He paid tribute to the other two laureates, saying that “their contributions are just overwhelming.”

“Our discovery in some ways is the basis of quantum computing. Exactly at this moment where this fits in is not entirely clear to me.”

However, speaking from his cellphone, Clarke added: “One of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work.’’

The Nobel committee said that the laureates’ work in the 1980s continues to provide opportunities to develop “the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors.”

“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” said Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

The 100-year-old field of quantum mechanics deals with the seemingly impossible subatomic world where switches can be on and off at the same time and parts of atoms tunnel through what seems like impenetrable barriers. The prize winning trio’s work helped take that into the larger world, where it has the potential to supercharge computing and communications.

What the three physicists did “is taking the scale of something that we can’t see, we can’t touch, we can’t feel and bringing it up to the scale of something recognizable and make it something you can build upon,” said Physics Today editor-in-chief Richard Fitzgerald, who in the 1990s worked in the field on a competitors’ group.

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“Quantum computers is one very sort of obvious use, but they’re also can be used for quantum sensors, so to be able to make very sensitive measurements of, for example, magnetic fields, and perhaps also for cryptography, so to encode information so it cannot be easily listened to by a third party,” Mark Pearce, a professor of astrophysics and Nobel Physics Committee member, told The Associated Press.

It is the 119th time the prize has been awarded. Last year, artificial intelligence pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.

On Monday, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our bodies.

Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics on Oct. 13.

The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes.

The prizes carry priceless prestige and a cash award of nearly $1.2 million.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

Rudy Gobert recalls tape in the corners of the practice court during his first few years in Utah, marking the spots guys must sprint to every time down the floor to ensure proper spacing, particularly in transition.

“And then it became a habit,” Gobert said. “It became something that whether you’re fresh or you’re tired, you’re going to do it. Because you built that habit.”

Those are things Minnesota is attempting to instill this year in training camp. From getting out in transition on offense to pressuring the ball defensively, the Timberwolves have clear objectives they’re attempting to engrain during the time of year when it’s easiest to do so.

You often are who you are once the regular season begins. Attempting to reinvent yourself on the fly is a fool’s errand. Minnesota tried to do things like take care of the ball and play with more pace in the Western Conference Finals. But those weren’t traits the Wolves had developed, so they couldn’t deploy them when the lights were brightest.

Championship habits are built in October. How do you develop those? Minnesota is using repetition. Wolves guard Mike Conley said the first thing Minnesota does to open practice is a drill that throws the ball down court while players get to certain spots on the floor.

“There’s nothing by accident,” Conley said. “All these things are important.”

What Conley likes most is the consistency with which they’ve been enforced thus far. If players aren’t imposing enough ball pressure on the perimeter, it’s called out.

“As soon as you’re not winning that battle on the ball,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said, “you blow the whistle and get them up and get them where they need to be.”

The same thing is done when guys don’t sprint up the court. Or when they don’t swing the ball in the halfcourt offense.

Much of last year’s camp was spent adjusting to a massive trade that reshuffled the roster. But with everyone except Nickeil Alexander-Walker back from a year ago, Minnesota has the opportunity to hammer down on the finer points — things that usually require effort and attention to detail — that can be the difference between good and great.

All reports indicate the players have bought into the points of emphasis and are executing them at a high level over the first week of camp. Wolves forward Julius Randle noted there shouldn’t be any need for reminders this early in the game.

“But just even throughout practice, I’m sure some things (usually) get lax like in the middle hour of practice. (That) hasn’t been the case,” Randle said last week. “Guys have been pretty locked in, pretty focused from the very beginning. We had a great day yesterday, a great day today. So, I mean, there hasn’t been any slippage. … We know what we’ve got to do and it’s up to us to do it every day.”

That’s the key. Once a team achieve that, it becomes who you are. Wolves assistant coach Micah Nori joked that guys may start camp by running to the corner every time down the floor.

“And then all of a sudden, two weeks from now, everybody’s at the break. And then four weeks from now, they’re all stopping in the high quad,” he said. “That was Finchy’s biggest message to all these guys, and I thought he made a great analogy: ‘If you’re a golfer and you’re trying to go from a 20 to a 10 handicap, it’s much easier than trying to go from a five to a three.”

Minnesota is already a good team. But to become one of the NBA’s best, it has to win on the margins via the game’s finer points.

“For us, it’s building those habits, continuing to talk about that every day, not just the first week of camp,” Nori said.

“It’s just like anything,” Conley said. “You wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth. You do things like that to (establish) a routine.”

That’s how championship-level foundations are composed.

“There’s always moments when you might not do it as much, and that’s when your teammates have got to be there to talk to you and remind you who we are, and what we’re trying to accomplish,” Gobert said.

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LONDON — You could see the joy on their faces as soon as the game clock expired.

You could hear the relief in their voices as they talked about the escaping with an ugly win.

You could feel the weight lifted off their shoulders as they packed their bags and prepared for a flight back to the Twin Cities.

The unprecedented international swing that took the Vikings through Dublin and London over the past week and a half was finally over.

Asked about the Vikings capping the trip with a 21-17 win over the Cleveland Browns on Sunday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, head coach Kevin O’Connell joked that he couldn’t think because his brain hurt.

“I’m not sure anybody’s had a trip like this,” O’Connell said. “It’s definitely on the podium for the longest I would believe.”

Not that the Vikings backed down from the challenge. They seemed genuinely excited about being the first team in NFL history to play consecutive international games in different countries.

Maybe the biggest reason O’Connell felt comfortable with the Vikings being the guinea pig for the NFL was because of the people behind the scenes handling the logistics.

The long list includes director of team operations Paul Martin, director of equipment services Mike Parson,  vice president of player health and performance Tyler Williams and head performance dietician Ben Hawkins, among a handful of others.

“I could not do my job without a lot of folks that put a lot of work into a trip that had not been done before,” O’Connell said. “To see our team come to life and finish the way they did is a credit to a lot of them.”

That doesn’t mean the lengthy trip was devoid of challenges for the Vikings. After losing to the Steelers in Ireland, they were feeling the pressure as they prepared for the Browns in London.

“A dub was a must,” Justin Jefferson said. “We couldn’t go home on that plane 0-2.”

Though nobody would mistake these millionaires for roughing it in the English countryside, living at the Hanbury Manor in Ware, England, was certainly an abnormal way to prepare for such an important game.

They lived out of suitcases in old rooms on the estate built in the late 1800s. They prepared on a practice field plopped in the middle of a golf course. They hardly had free time to leave the grounds.

Nothing about it was normal for the Vikings. Not that they used it as an excuse.

“We made the best of it,” edge rusher Jonathan Greenard said. “We didn’t let that affect us.”

That was exactly how O’Connell wanted his players to approach it. He kept his messaging consistent, saying that if they looked hard enough for excuses, they would probably find them.

“Why would we take the energy to look,” O’Connell said. “Let’s just focus on what we need to focus on.”

That mindset carried over to the game, where the Vikings found a way to walk away with a win over the Browns. As excited as everybody was in the visitor’s locker room, however, the exhaustion was evident amid the euphoria.

“It seems like we’ve been gone a while,” O’Connell said. “We’re very much excited to get back home and try to start getting healthy, as a lot is still in front of this team.”

It helps that the Vikings have a chance to get healthy over their bye before the schedule gets a lot tougher.

If they are able to string together some solid play out of their bye, the past week and a half that had a potential to turn this season upside down will instead be looked at as something that brought everybody closer together.

Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell leaves the field after a win over the Cleveland Browns in an NFL football game in London, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. (Adam Bettcher/AP Content Services for the NFL)
Cleveland Browns quarterback Dillon Gabriel (8) is tackled during the first half of the NFL game between Minnesota Vikings and Cleveland Browns at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

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On Sept. 28, we watched yet another sequel to the American horror show.

An evil man rammed his truck into a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, opened fire on the people inside and lit the church on fire. By the time the embers cooled and the bodies were counted, we learned that four people were killed and eight were injured — another terrible day in a series of terrible days in a nation that can feel as if it’s coming apart.

We also knew what would happen next. Before there was a chance to mourn the dead, partisans online worked to find out the identity of the gunman and his ideology. After all, the combatants in the culture war have a voracious need for political ammunition. It’s important to constantly prove that “they” are evil, and “they” want you dead.

There was even an insidious new twist in the post-shooting debate. A number of Christian fundamentalists online chose that day of grief — the same day that many Mormons learned that the president of the church, Russell Nelson, had died — to proclaim that the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wasn’t truly Christian.

Welcome to America in the year 2025, where every evil act is an opportunity to score political points, and all too many Christians demonstrate profound cruelty in Jesus’ name.

But then …

But then, something remarkable happened — something entirely unexpected.

A member of the LDS Church, Dave Butler, started an online fundraising campaign … for the family of the shooter. He was killed at the scene and had left behind a wife and young child.

As Sonia Rao, my newsroom colleague reported, the money rolled in. It took only two hours to raise $7,000. By the 12-hour mark, the total reached $100,000. By Friday, more than $300,000 had been raised, much of it donated by Latter-day Saints.

The messages attached to the gifts were extraordinary. One donor wrote: “We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are Christians. As Christians and followers of Christ, we ‘mourn with those that mourn, comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and stand as witnesses of God.’ We’re praying for you and your family.”

Another person wrote: “We are heartbroken as we think of what you are going through. You are loved and precious, just as much as any other family. We hope that you will have everything you need, both now and in the years to come.”

It would be understandable for members of the church to look at the suspect’s wife with suspicion, to wait for more facts before they showered the suspect’s family with love and support. After all, it’s only human to ask questions. Did she know anything? Could she have stopped him?

But no. In true imitation of Christ, who — according to Christian theology — died for us while we were still sinners, Latter-day Saints did not wait to pour out their love. They just gave it, unconditionally, to a family they did not know.

Can we get through this?

We live in a time of national hopelessness and despair. Last week, The New York Times and Siena University released a poll showing that almost two-thirds of voters now believe that we’re too politically divided to solve the nation’s problems. The same poll showed that concerns about political polarization are now the second-highest concern of American voters, behind the economy but ahead of health care, crime, inequality and foreign policy.

If you combine those who were concerned about polarization with those who said their main concern was the state of American democracy, then worries about the state of our political union become the top concern of American voters.

I see this in real life. When I speak on college campuses or in churches, or when I simply talk politics with friends, I constantly hear different variations of the same questions: Can we get through this? What’s the plan? And perhaps the most poignant question of all — is there hope?

There are, in fact, plans — lots of plans — to restore our nation’s unity and purpose. Whether it’s restoring our country’s capacity to build big things, or amending the Constitution to rein in imperial presidents, or simply doing something about those infernal phones that cause so many children (and adults) to isolate themselves in anxiety and depression, many of our nation’s best and brightest minds are brimming with good ideas.

When I share my own ideas, I get the same response time and again: We can’t do it. People hate each other too much. We are too divided. We can’t compromise.

There is still light and high beauty

But hope isn’t a plan — it’s something else, something far more powerful.

When I speak to audiences that are in despair, I like to close with one of my favorite quotes in all of literature. It comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Return of the King,” the final volume of his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

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Sam and Frodo are alone in Mordor, the land of Sauron. Their quest to destroy the One Ring is failing. Surrounded by evil, isolated in deep darkness, all hope seems to be slipping away. But then Sam looks up in the sky.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains,” Tolkien wrote, “Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

There is profound truth in those words. It reflects the fundamental nature of hope. It’s rooted in eternal truth — as the Book of John says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” — but it’s also unexpected. It can arise in the most unlikely of circumstances in the most terrible of times.

America has witnessed two remarkable acts of forgiveness in the past month. Erika Kirk forgave the man who killed her husband. Latter-day Saints loved the family of the man who massacred their brothers and sisters. A nation that produces such acts of such love is a nation that still has life. It’s a nation that still has hope.

On Tuesday, Kelsey Piper, a staff writer at The Argument, responded to the Latter-day Saints church’s act of love with a beautiful and true statement. “If America is going to make it,” Piper wrote, “it will be because people choose forgiving things they should never have had to forgive over hurting people they have every right to be angry with.”

That is the essence of grace. Eight days ago, the shadow came for the men, women and children of a church in Michigan. But there is still light and high beauty, and last week the light that flooded America came from people of faith who were determined to demonstrate the character of the Savior they love.

David French writes a column for the New York Times.