Luis Jauregui, a professor at UC Irvine, is an expert in quantum physics who is smart enough to describe his work in terms that are foreign to a non-scientist, yet affable enough to explain it anyway, without making any non-scientist feel dumb.

This is a particularly good mix of traits. In a talk-to-the-hand era of government funding, scientific explanations can be an existential issue.

And Jauregui, it happens, has a great story to explain. The quantum materials that he and his students work on in a gloriously chaotic lab at UCI’s Rowland Hall are challenging, but they’re also interesting enough to be the grist for everything from sci-fi movies to seemingly endless Quora threads about the multiverse.

They’re also small. So small, in fact, that without instruments (and theories) concoct

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