Quantum science is humanity’s next giant leap. Here’s what that means for planet Earth

In the same way that “space is big” (as described in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), quantum physics is confounding. Science's best minds have been puzzling away at it for over a century, pawing at the subject like Schrà¶dinger's cat playing with a ball of cosmic string. But the bafflement is beginning to give way to understanding and we're starting to get a grasp on not only what quantum physics could mean, but what uses it could be put to. Here are just a few suggestions for entries in what could be an early draft of a…