Part of our International Year of Quantum Science and Technology coverage
Two African journalists have won the Quantum Pitch Competition held at the 2025 World Conference of Science Journalists in South Africa.
Two African science journalists – Paul Adepoju and Mkhululi Chimoio – have won the “Quantum Pitch Competition”, organized by Physics World and Physics Magazine to mark the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ).
The competition was launched at the 2025 World Conference of Science Journalists in Pretoria, South Africa, where delegates to a science-writing workshop were invited to submit story ideas on any aspect of quantum science and technology
Chimoio’s winning entry is an article covering the work of the South African physicist Lindiwe Khumalo, who carries out experiments on quantum sensors in a former gold mine 3 km underground.
Khmalo uses the natural shielding from 3 km of rock to test muon-based sensors and ultra-low-noise interferometric measurements, contributing to dark-matter detection, neutrino studies, and precision metrology.
“It’s a compelling human story about an African physicist working in an extreme environment usually associated with heavy industry, not quantum physics,” says Chimoio, whose article will be published in Physics World soon.
Chimoio is a Zimbabwean-born investigative journalist, now based in South Africa. He specializes in geopolitics, technology, security and socio-economic issues, with some of his writing appearing in Nature Africa and Africa Uncensored.
Adepoju’s winning piece – describing the discovery of large-scale galactic motion using the emission produced by tiny quantum “spin-flips” in hydrogen atoms – is published today in Physics Magazine.
Adepoju is a freelance journalist and podcaster based in Ibadan, Nigeria, whose has written for publications such as Nature, New Scientist, and Scientific American.
In his pitch-winning story, Adepoju describes the recent discovery of rotation within a galaxy-filled filament that stretches over 50 million light years. The cosmic winding, which had never been directly measured in a single filament, was found using hydrogen-emission data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and could lead to a new way to probe dark matter.
IYQ 2025 ends this week at an official closing ceremony in Accra, Ghana, on 10 and 11 February, the full programme for which can be read here.
- Physics World and Physics Magazine would like to thank all of the writers who submitted pitches to the contest. We hope that this endeavour will lead to more quantum-inspired stories by science journalists across the world.
This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.
Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the year for more coverage of the IYQ.
Find out more on our quantum channel.
