Entanglement is a key part of quantum computing
Bartlomiej K. Wroblewski/Alamy
Scientists usually try to find sensible explanations for strange phenomena, but quantum entanglement complicates them.
This connection between elementary particles, which appear to affect each other instantaneously no matter how far apart they are, defies our understanding of space and time. It famously baffled Albert Einstein, calling it “spooky action seen from afar,” and it remains a source of mystery to this day. “These quantum correlations seem to somehow emerge from outside space-time, in the sense that there is no space-time story that explains them,” he says. Nicholas Gysin at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
But the truth is, even as physicists embrace the mysterious properties of entanglement and use it to develop new technologies, they question whether it has anything left to teach us about how the universe works.
Quantum entanglement can be created between particles by bringing them close together and allowing them to interact, intertwining their properties, or entangled particles can be created together through processes such as the emission of a photon or the spontaneous fission of a single particle such as the Higgs boson.
The spooky thing is that, under the right conditions, if you send these particles to opposite sides of the universe, performing a measurement on one side will instantly affect the outcome of the measurement on the other, even though no information has been exchanged between them.
To Einstein, this strangeness showed that something was missing in quantum theory.
Source: www.newscientist.com
