By now, you’ve probably seen a rash of breathless headlines, inspired by the recent Nobel Prize in Physics, proclaiming that physicists have proven “The Universe Isn’t Real!” It’s an exciting idea—my mind immediately leapt to what it could mean for me personally. If the universe isn’t real, nothing I do matters. I can have that…

If you follow science and technology news like we do here at the Planetary Broadcast Network, you have probably noticed that the term “quantum” is being bandied about quite a bit these days. It seems like every researcher with a string of letters after his name is working on some new quantum state of matter,…