If machines are ever going to become truly intelligent they will need to learn how to understand language — to truly understand what words, sentences and paragraphs mean.

The study of meaning in language, semantics, seems to be a matter for psychologists or perhaps philosophers, but has recently caught the attention of theoretical physicist Sanjaye Ramgoolam of Queen Mary, University of London. He is using techniques from atomic physics to get at the meaning of words. The results may not only help computers to understand, it also gives a new view of language from a natural scientist's perspective.

Find out more about this surprising and exciting new approach to linguistics in our video interview.

This interview is part of our Researching the unknown series featuring physicists from Queen Mary, University of London.