鈥淥nly atoms and the void are real,鈥 said the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. 鈥淲ell, actually, it鈥檚 a bit more complicated than that. Atoms can also be waves, the void is made up of fields and everyone is going to need to start using the word 鈥榪uantum鈥 all the time.鈥
OK, he said only the first bit. Democritus pioneered atomism 鈥 the idea that everything in the universe can be divided into atoms, which can then be divided no further. But as we mark 100 years since the development of quantum mechanics in 1925, I have been wondering whether, somewhere…
