Qubits, entanglement, superposition, trapped ions, Schrödinger’s cat. These terms sound strange because the world of quantum mechanics — where things can exist in multiple states at once — is strange.

The problem with quantum mechanics, or at least the reason even physicists don’t understand it, isn’t that it paints an unfamiliar picture of reality. It isn’t difficult to accept that the world of ...

One of the quietest places in the universe is an unremarkable room on the southern coast of the UK. Here, in one of the University of Southampton’s physics labs, overseen by Hendrik Ulbricht, a ...