Often termed as the most successful theory of the last century, quantum physics underpins the workings of everyday items like silicon chips, lasers and MRI machines. At the heart of this theory is the seemingly counter-intuitive fact that down at extremely small scales, atoms, photons and other particles start behaving more like waves.

This in turn leads to phenomena such as ‘quantum superposition’, where a particle can exist in more than one possible state at once, and ‘quantum entanglement’, where linked particles share the same physical characteristics, even when separated by long distances. Quantum technologies set out to utilise such exotic behaviour as the basis of more powerful computing, secure sharing of information and high-sensitivity sensors.