Quantum science – Stranger than fiction?

Resource provided by the The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology

• What would happen if an atom was the size of a tennis ball? Would this have so much energy that Earth would cease to exist?

• What if there existed an infinite number of existing parallel universes and an event in one universes resulted in all other outcomes in all other universes?

• How much energy could we get by bringing two nuclei together? Is this a feasible way of making fuel?

While the above questions may sound like the work of science fiction, they explore underlying principles of quantum science. Indeed, quantum science has been influential in a number of works of science fiction – the three examples are from Futurama, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Iron Man. In the podcast series “Sci Fi Sci Fact”, scientists from the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology explore ideas from science fiction and discuss what is real, what is not, and how quantum science really can be stranger than fiction!