The Race To Prove 'Spooky' Quantum Connection May Have a Winner
Illustration of an atom Kevin Dooley via Flickr CC by 2.0 Particles don’t obey the same rules as people. Poke a particle, and another one far away can instantly respond the touch -- without any messages passing through the space between, as if the two particles were one. “Entanglement” is what quantum physics calls the intimate connection. Einstein called it “spooky.” To his dying day, he refused to believe that nature could be so unreasonable. But a new research paper from the Netherlands might have convinced even the father of relativity that he was wrong. Posted online on August 24, it describes the first experiment that meets the mathematical gold standard for proving entanglement, set down more than half a century ago. The paper hasn’t yet gone through peer review; it’s currently under review...