The world of the quantum stretches the limits of human imagination. Who could ever believe, for instance, that atoms -- the building blocks of our seemingly solid landscape -- are able to exist in different places at one time? That they can be "entangled" together such that an action on one atom or particle will affect another across considerable distances? Or that they are irrevocably altered simply by the act of being observed? Yet that is what quantum laws tell us. Einstein himself was famously troubled by the implication that reality was actually just a collection of probabilities, where God not only played dice with the universe but also hid the dice. "To common sense, quantum mechanics is nonsensical," says Nobel prize-winning physicist William D. Phillips of the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST).Nevertheless, developing quantum theory was "the crowning intellectual achievement of the last century," says California Institute of Technology physicist John Preskill. It's the underlying principle for many of today's devices, from lasers to magnetic resonance imaging machines. And these may prove to be just the low-hanging fruit. Many scientists foresee revolutionary technologies based on the truly strange properties of the quantum world.For instance, there's a state of matter that scientists created less than a decade ago called the Bose-Einstein condensate, in which each of many millions of atoms act identically and are everywhere in the sample at once. Dozens of research groups around the world are experimenting with these condensates, whose properties portend a future we can barely glimpse.

"Physicists relish the weirdness, but now we're starting to ask if we can put the weirdness to work," says Preskill.Some of the theoretical possibilities boggle the mind. For example: the elusive but intensely desired quantum computer. The mathematical challenge of factoring a 400-digit number -- which would take 10 billion years on today's supercomputers -- might be cracked by a quantum computer in 30 seconds. While there are a number of approaches to building such a device, recent experiments with the Bose-Einstein condensates are opening up clever new paths.

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String theory is believed to possibly hold the key to making quantum mechanics easier to understand. This is a relatively new theory that has gained a large amount of support from physicists and is believed by many in the scientific community to be a breakthrough in our understanding of the way the universe works. Quantum physics and physics do not yield a complete understanding of subatomic interactions because they give two very different pictures of how things should behave. The laws of physics are applicable to larger interactions above the atomic level but cannot be applied at the subatomic level because they yield incorrect results. Thus quantum physics was developed to discover the laws governing quantum interactions, but they only hold true for the subatomic level. String theory is able to provide explanations as to why this happens and is able to bridge this long time gap in our search for universal laws that hold true at the subatomic level and above. It has been mathematically proven to be based on solid conclusions and is given credit for being a sound theory. This theory requires at least eleven dimensions including our tangible three and time. At the basis of this theory is a fundamental element, an eleven dimensional string composed of energy. These have variations in frequency displaying different properties that when combined with other strings, such as in subatomic particles give it the characteristics it displays. This is of course a brief overview of the theory, but it allows for the possible scientific explanation of how we may be able to interact with our surroundings in ways that had been thought to be impossible.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/

It's odd I was reading the article you posted (somewhere else) yesterday Saruman . And I came across a different sight that explains the Bose-Einstien condensate in plain language so for those who are interested ...Bose Einstien condensate, for Dummies ...:0)

Very interesting.
Thanks.