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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