That type of design uses three parallel arms to control the print head, enabling a device that's not only "fun to watch, " according to the group, but that can also quickly print high resolution objects with a large 9-inch by 11-inch build envelope.

ENGADGET

Such a device would be able to carry out many calculations in parallel, with each of the superposed states acting as part of the calculation.

ECONOMIST: The 2012 Nobel prizes

Unfortunately, it involved building an artificially intelligent observer and, even more problematically, that observer had to be a quantum computer, a device that exploits quantum mechanics to do huge numbers of calculations in parallel.

ECONOMIST: The universe, it appears, may not be alone