Here, there and everywhere

After decades as laboratory curiosities, some of quantum physics' oddest effects are beginning to be put to use, says Jason Palmer PATRICK GILL, a director of the new Quantum Metrology Institute at Britain's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in south-west London and an expert in atomic clocks, points to a large table full of lenses and mirrors, vacuum chambers and electronics. "And there's a smaller one over there," he says. NPL is part of a consortium of the planet's official timekeepers. In all its atomic-clock laboratories, each of the flagship devices--some of which are huge--is flanked by a smaller one under construction. Miniaturisation is the name of the game.