Science  Write  Now

Quantum theory celebrates its centenary in 2025 with an extraordinary record of technological advances in its wake: lasers, medical imaging, atomic clocks, computing, global telecommunications, and more. The future looks even brighter, with quantum-classical chip design, secure optical data networks, and quantum sensors that allow us to build precise maps of processes under the Earth, in the sky, and inside molecules. Despite this undisputed success, what quantum theory actually tells us about reality is as unclear today as 100 years ago.

In our day-to-day conception of the world, composite systems are only the sum of their parts, influences cannot travel faster than light, and physical objects have their properties whether or not anyone is looking. In quantum physics, by contrast, some composite systems are more than the sum of their parts, influences may well travel faster than light, and the properties of quantum objects seem to depend on how we look at them. This last feature means that the world is partly constituted by the very act of measuring it.

In the end, quantum physics isn't just tiny stuff playing weird tricks on us, nor is it just about building cooler gadgets. Understanding quantum theory is about discovering what it even means for something to be real. The experiments keep telling us the world depends more on us and the way we measure it than classical physics ever allowed. That sounds a lot like physics telling us to upgrade our picture of reality.

— Dr Peter W Evans, Quantum Guest Scientist & Philsopher

At its foundations, a 'quantum' view of the world is complex, slippery even, because it depends to some extent upon the viewer. Isn't that so much like art? Many of the pieces in this edition lean into this connection. In Blue Belle, Caitlin Kelly's artist seeks to understand what "paint me as I am" really means; in The Painter, Radhika Nansi's subject resists being defined by the young man who sketches her. Sandra Nelson's narrator struggles to define "it" in the poem O: "It's more like a fog. // But not like a fog." And Jessica Mupenzi reflects her recent immigration from Zambia to Cairns in the essay Between States, asking: can I be both?

Several other pieces connect quantum theory with grief, the moments we've forgotten the one we love is gone, the moments we remember them and so bring them back to life. In the short story Collapse, Bianca Orazio's young narrator struggles with her mother's death: "Now she’s alive until I open my eyes // Until I look, // And the world collapses." Magdalena Ball's poem Eastern Whip Bird posits "Nothing is lost, not even the moment".

And maybe these quantum perspectives are a means of second / third / infinite possibilities — a bus crash that happens again and again, the anxieties of a junior scientist, a missed encounter, a speck that's a moth that's "a death I suffered".

This edition, we're publishing four pieces by our outstanding high-school-age Young Writing Fellows, who worked with me on short stories or personal essays inspired by quantum science and who benefitted from generous conversations with some of Queensland's top quantum scientists. (Thank you to Nunzio Motto, Pratap Devarapalli, Steve Bickley and Eric Cavalcanti!) These students have been amazing to work with! I'm so excited about the writing they've produced, and about our next generation of writer-scientists, exemplified here and here and here and here — if quantum physics tells us anything, it's yes, you can be both! (Please be both!)

I hope you enjoy this edition, which features some of our favourite SWN writers alongside many who are new to us, from all around the world, and who we are excited to be including in Quantum.

Please check out the Table of Contents to make sure you don't miss anything! And if you love our cover image, please check out Fernando Coehlo's artist statement here, and his website here.

A special thank you to everyone who supported us in our 2025 AusArts fundraiser; to Amanda Russell (DETSI), who helped connect us with scientists; and to our extended SWN family—Adeeba Shaik, Bianca Millroy, Caitlin Kelly, James Reese, Jessica White, Mirja Rohnerkontkanen, and Niamh Wood—who helped (and are helping!) to bring this edition to life.

Have a great rest of 2025, and Happy International Year of Quantum Science and Technology!

— Amanda Niehaus, Editor-in-Chief, SWN