We never see tables in two places at once or cats that are both dead and alive—yet this is exactly what quantum mechanics predicts. As a result, it has typically been assumed that quantum mechanics only applies to small scales. But according to Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral, this is a radical mistake. The universe is quantum at every scale, and we only get paradoxes of quantum mechanics when we insist on a classical world outside it. In this interview, IAI contributing editor Ozbir Kip challenges Vedral on whether reality is really quantum all the way up.

Kip: Your work is primarily in quantum information. Most of us are familiar with or have heard of quantum mechanics. Can you tell us a bit about what quantum information is as a field of study?

Vedral: Yes, this was a big revolution that started maybe in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was a realization that how much information you can encode into a physical system and how quickly you can process this information are not abstract mathematical laws, but fundamentally depend on the laws of physics.