Quantum leap in 'spooky action at a distance'

The distinguished American physicist Richard Feynman once said that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't. The science behind the laws that govern the sub-atomic world has evolved over more than a century, revealing that the smallest particles behave outside the realm of classical physics.

Physicists have had to confront the weird reality that, at the smallest level, objects can behave as both particles and waves and, even more bizarrely, can be described as being in two places at once.

Even though the theories governing the sub-atomic world are still evolving, giving rise to alternative explanations of the nature of the universe - or, as some would contend, universes - quantum mechanics has already provided the basis for technological advances in the modern world.