Quantum theory: it’s unreal

How to construct a better narrative over what really goes on in the subatomic world. Inaugural lecture of Professor Terry Rudolph

Understanding physics is usually about telling stories of how and why stuff happens, and quantifying and confirming these tales with a mix of mathematics and observation. The case of quantum theory is anomalous because although we have the mathematics and observations, scientists struggle to find a ‘sensible’ underpinning narrative.

Should we care? Should we even expect the world to be amenable to the kinds of stories that satisfy some over-brained apes who think it’s very important to interact with things on the scale of bananas?

Smug philosophical superiority aside, it turns out that our best methods of engineering twenty first century quantum technologies exploit precisely this gap in the narrative that we have identified, and are guaranteed to be superior to those based on banana-scale physics!