|
Maybe you've lost your SPOOKS?
LONDON — Scientists working with a feature of light described by Albert Einstein as "spooky" have managed to link, or entangle, up to five particles in an advance that may lead to better measuring instruments and faster computers.
Israeli researchers said Thursday their technique could be scaled up to create even larger quantum entanglements, in which light particles, or photons, exist in two possible states simultaneously.
The notion that photons can be connected in such a way that changing the state of one instantly affects another, even when they are miles apart, alarmed Einstein, who called it "spooky action at a distance."
But quantum physicists -- who study the universe at the ultra-small level of atoms, photons and other particles -- have already put it to work to improve data encryption and, they hope, to someday supercharge computers.
|