The Nobel committee announced Tuesday that Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger are the recipients of this year’s prize for physics for their experiments on quantum entanglement.
Quantum entanglement describes a fundamental feature of quantum theory in which two or more quantum particles can be linked together in such a way that a change in the state of one particle is instantly reflected in the other without any information passing between them and no matter how far apart they may be.
Albert Einstein famously referred to the idea (merely a theoretical musing at the time) as “spooky action at a distance” and in a famous paper called ‘Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?’ concluded that ‘No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this’, given that if true, information between entangled particles would have to travel faster than the speed of light – an impossible feat according to his own theory of relativity.
Einstein was eventually proven wrong by this year’s trio of Nobel winners who developed experiments showing that entanglement, despite how counterintuitive it seems, is a very real phenomenon.
‘It’s so weird,’ Aspect said of entanglement in a call with the Nobel committee. ‘I am accepting in my mental images something which is totally crazy’.
In 1984, Aspect famously performed an experiment on photons, supplying experimental proof of their entanglement.
‘I have no understanding of how it works but entanglement appears to be very real’, Clauser, who was awarded his prize for a 1972 experiment, told The Associated Press.
Zeilinher, the third member of the prize-winning trio, is most well-known for demonstrating a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, allowing information to be transmitted over distances using entanglement (he once set up a 500m link between entangled particles through the sewers between City Hall and the Bank of Austria in Vienna and transferred 3000 euros from the Mayor of Vienna’s funds to the University’s account using an entanglement-encrypted message).
Zeilinger told reporters in Vienna following the announcement of his award that when conducting his very first experiments he ‘was sometimes asked by the press what they were good for’ and he would tell them with pride: ‘It’s good for nothing. I’m doing this purely out of curiosity’.
Thanks to the pioneering work of these three physicists, however, quantum entanglement can conceivably be put to far-ranging use in things like quantum computers, superconducting material, encryption technology and even – although not anytime soon – teleportation involving more than just tiny particles as is possible at present.
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