India, Oct. 8 -- Even people without a background in science are familiar with Schrodinger's cat because of the sheer audacity of the idea: the cat in a box is both alive and dead at the same time until you actually observe it, at which time it is definitely dead. Although he was one of the pioneers of quantum physics, Erwin Schrodinger's thought experiment showed that the ideas of quantum mechanics cannot easily be understood when viewed in terms of real-world objects.

Harnessing the strange properties of the quantum world for real-world use is the key to the future. Quantum computers work at speeds several orders of magnitude higher than that of classical computers, but building them for mass use remains a challenge. The key area being...