Tag: quantum entanglement
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You won’t be traveling by quantum teleportation
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] This article appeared in the spring print issue of Popular Science, but has also been published online. Quantum teleportation is real, but it’s not what you think A commute…
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Star Trek, quantum mechanics, and the meaning of being human (kinda)
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] The trouble with teleportation Quantum teleportation is a really fascinating area of research, but it’s hampered by the name, which evokes Star Trek. The reality is trickier, and why…
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What’s the deal with Google’s quantum computer?
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] Google and NASA Team Up on Quantum Computer The next generation of computers is a few years off, but it’s pretty damn cool For The Daily Beast: It’s like…
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Quantum droplets in an ocean of light
If you shine light on a barrier with two openings, it produces a distinct pattern of light on a distant screen. Measuring that pattern is standard in introductory physics laboratories. (You could even do it at home, but I recommend a very dark room and a bright laser pointer if you hope to see anything…
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O, what entangled photons we weave!
(OK, it doesn’t scan. So sue me.) Quantum entanglement is a challenging topic, and one which has tripped up a lot of people (including many physicists!) over the decades. In brief, entanglement involves two (or more) particles constituting a single system: measurement on one particle instantly determines the result of similar measurements on the second,…
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The week in review (September 22-28)
I spent much of the week sick, but that doesn’t stop me. I care about you, people. All black holes, great and small (Galileo’s Pendulum): As my regular readers have probably figured out, I love black holes. I could probably find an excuse to write about them most days. So, why not take an online…
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Disentangling environmental influences in photon-atom interactions
Often in physics, we can separate the object from the environment and the experimental apparatus from what’s being measured, but that separation is approximate. In quantum systems, those distinctions break down, to the point where the environment “measures” the system, in ways we don’t fully understand even after nearly a century of study. (A lot…
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Quantum entanglement between La Palma and Tenerife
Quantum entanglement is a weird concept in a theory full of weird concepts. A typical experiment goes as follows: you prepare a pair of photons such that their polarizations are complementary. A subsequent measurement on one photon will reveal the outcome of a related measurement on the other photon—no matter how widely they are separated.…
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Schrödinger’s gardenia: Does biology need quantum mechanics?
Erwin Schrödinger is best known to non-scientists for his thought experiment involving a cat (or maybe his unconventional living arrangement), but he also wrote What is Life?, a book that attempted to bring the fields of physics and biology closer to each other. Today, experiment is beginning to reach the point where we can see…
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Quantum entanglement, locality, and a cute kitten
(Admittedly, the cute kitten was added by my editor.) Albert Einstein described quantum entanglement in 1935, along with colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, and used it as an argument against quantum mechanics. Entanglement is the phenomenon by which two widely separated systems act as a single system, due to interactions in the past; a…
Bowler Hat Science 