[A] nugget of physics... isn't just an interesting fact: it's a tool... useful anywhere...

May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.

She held the needle to the light. It was a wonder how something sharp came down to nothing like that. She looked through the needle's eye. So that's the Kingdom of Heaven, she thought. So that's all there was.

Their transmitters are nanotech — diamond lattice structures they call a ‘q-link’ — a tiny mass that they vibrate at high frequency to send gravitational waves through higher-dimensional space.

But relying on invisible miracles is the stuff of religion, not science. To ascertain whether this remarkable accident was real, physicists relied on another facet of the quantum world. Associated with every background field is a particle, and if you pick a point in space and hit it hard enough, you may whack out real particles.

5225. To seek a Needle in a Bottle of Hay.

It turns out that information leaks between universes at the quantum level. We think it accounts for all kinds of phenomena, from what drives evolution to strange insights and mystical experiences through the ages. The machine was built as an attempt to investigate and amplify them.

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

The quantum revolution showed us why the old picture of a vacuum as an empty box was untenable. ...Gradually, this exotic new picture of quantum nothingness succumbed to experimental exploration... in the form of vacuum tubes, light bulbs and X-rays. Now the 'empty' space itself started to be probed. ...There was always something left: a vacuum energy that permeated every fibre of the Universe.

"It's just a stupid sword," she said, aloud this time...
... but it wasn't.
Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile.

It's like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was —

My writing is quantum writing. Do you know of the quantum bullet? The quantum bullet, when it's fired, leaves not one hole but two. That's how my writing is.

"I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe."
"You poked it with a stick?"
"No!" I said. "Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick."

As well look for a needle in a bottle of hay.