Christopher Monroe spends his life poking at atoms with light. He arranges them into rings and chains and then massages them with lasers to explore their properties and make basic quantum computers.

After first visiting the new exhibition by CJ Mahony and Georgie Grace at Smiths Row, I encouraged a good friend to go and have a look. Because it’s safe to say that Machines to Crystallize Time is ...

But there was a loophole—and researchers in a separate branch of physics found a way to exploit the gap. Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, and his team used chains of ...