The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists on Tuesday for discovering that a bizarre barrier-defying phenomenon in the quantum realm could be observed on an electrical circuit in our classical world.

Researchers Mitsuyoshi Kamba, Naoki Hara, and Kiyotaka Aikawa of the University of Tokyo have successfully demonstrated quantum squeezing of the motion of a nanoscale particle, a motion whose uncertainty is smaller than that of quantum mechanical fluctuations.

On the centennial of modern quantum mechanics, the Nobel Committee awarded the year’s most prestigious physics prize to an experiment that demonstrated how quantum effects play out on large scales—including inside your smartphone. In fact, the implications of this year’s winner—quantum tunneling—stretch way beyond the device in your pocket.

Harnessing the strange properties of the quantum world for real-world use is the key to the future. Quantum computers work at speeds several orders of magnitude higher than that of classical computers,