"We know the underlying laws that govern everything," said Ni. "But because almost everything on Earth is made of at least three or more atoms, those laws quickly become far too complex to solve." by Harvard University A heart surgeon doesn't need to grasp quantum mechanics to perform successful operations. Even chemists don't always need to know these fundamental principles to study chemical reactions. But for Kang-Kuen Ni, the Morris Kahn associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics, quantum spelunking is, like space exploration, a quest to discover a vast and mysterious new realm. Today, much of quantum mechanics is explained by Schrödinger's equation, a kind of master theory that governs the properties of everything on Earth. "Even though we know that, in principle, quantum mechanics governs everything," Ni said, "to actually see it is difficult and to actually calculate it is near-impossible." With a few well-reasoned assumptions and some innovative