Quantum field theory doesn’t get much coverage in popular science and if you open any textbook on the subject you’ll see why. It looks like an unholy crossbreed between quantum physics in a bad mood and every button you never push on a calculator. The idea of summarising it in 1,500 words or less for this article sounded daunting at first (it took a whole chapter to cover it in my recent book) but then again if I really did have to present it to a jury of aliens I wouldn’t have a choice.

Therefore, your honour, I request that you give me five minutes of your intergalactic attention. My presentation may not feature Jason Statham roundhouse kicking a shark in the eyeball, but I am going to try and justify the continued existence of the human race. Here goes…

Any object can be described in terms of its constituent particles and any event can be described in terms of how those particles interact. The more we know about how particles behave, the more phenomena we can explain. That’s the goal of quantum physics; to learn all the fundamental laws of particles and use them to understand everything.