Peter Haynes, professor of theory and simulation of materials at Imperial College London, said at a recent webinar: “[Quantum physics] is a remarkably successful theory that describes how light and matter behave, particularly at the atomic level.”

Understanding this behaviour – the behaviour of atomic and subatomic particles at a fundamental level – opens up new possibilities in computing and other technologies.

We are getting there, but it is still at the ‘voyage of discovery’ stage. As Professor Myungshik Kim, of the quantum information theory group at Imperial College London, said at the same event: “As we go further into the detail of elementary particles, we should also consolidate work on quantum mechanical interactions of elementary particles and materials, but this is getting more difficult to do with even our most powerful supercomputers. To simulate or to calculate quantum features more properly, we...