Entanglement is a key part of quantum computing
Bartolomew K. Wroblewski/Alamy
Scientists generally try to find rational explanations for strange phenomena, but quantum entanglement makes this extremely difficult.
This connection between nuclear particles, which appear to affect each other instantly no matter how far apart they are, defies our understanding of space and time. Albert Einstein famously puzzled over this, calling it “spooky action at a distance,” and it remains a source of mystery to this day. “These quantum correlations seem to somehow emerge from outside space and time, in the sense that there is no story within space and time that explains them,” he says. Nicholas Gysin At the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
But the truth is, while physicists have come to embrace the mysterious properties of quantum entanglement and are using it to develop new technologies, they are skeptical that quantum entanglement can tell us anything about how the universe works.
Quantum entanglement can be created between particles by bringing them close together and allowing them to interact so that their properties become entangled, or entangled particles can be created together in processes such as the emission of a photon or the spontaneous decay of a single particle such as the Higgs boson.
What’s spooky is that if, under the right conditions, you send these particles to opposite sides of the universe, measuring one will instantly affect the measurement on the other, even though there is no information exchange between them.
For Einstein…