Few phenomena in quantum physics seem as close to magic as entanglement. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance,” and harnessing it might one day make teleportation a reality. Entanglement is anti-intuitive, fantastical, and weird, but the science behind it is extremely well established.
It essentially involves placing two seemingly separate particles in a correlated state, such that changes made to one particle will instantaneously also influence changes to the other, even if the two particles are separated by great distances. Theoretically, two entangled particles can remain correlated even if they are on opposite sides of the universe from one another.
The only catch? Entanglement only seems to work on the smallest of scales, on things like photons or atoms. It seems restricted to the quantum realm, at least on a practical level. That’s not to say that entanglement on the macroscopic level is theoretically inconceivable, but just that when you scale things up, the world gets more complicated. There’s more noise […]
Wow! Interesting.