Mr Vedral's professional interests lie in quantum computing and quantum information science, which use the laws of quantum mechanics respectively to build powerful computers and render codes unbreakable.

ECONOMIST: Information theory

The strange science of quantum mechanics promises a revolution in computer power as radical as that following the invention of the transistor in the 1950s.

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These fields include areas of nanotechnology, where the categories of physics, chemistry and biology overlap and collapse on each other so as to create new kinds of science, and quantum mechanics, where experimental outcomes are usually seen only in blackboard-based probability formulas.

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Venables: Your work in science fiction goes back to your role as Dr. Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap in 1989, a series still syndicated around the world.

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In 2012, the European Science Foundation launched its Farquest programme, aiming to map out a pan-European quantum research structure in which quantum biology plays a big role.

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But transmitting single particles or, to be accurate, copying the quantum state of one particle on to another, perhaps of a different kind could one day have less science-fictional uses.

ECONOMIST: Don��t look now, I��m teleporting