THE QUANTUM MICROSCOPE REVOLUTION IS HERE

New entanglement based sensor surpasses light-based microscopes.

University of Queensland (UQ) researchers have built a quantum microscope based on the phenomenon Einstein once called “spooky action at a distance”.

The new device takes advantage of quantum entanglement to illuminate living samples safely; conventional microscopes use potentially damaging high-intensity light.

UQ quantum physicist Warwick Bowen, lead author on the new paper published in

Nature, says this supersedes non-quantum technology.

Quantum entanglement is a strange beast to get your head around. The idea is that two particles can become “entangled”, or linked, and will thereafter always mirror each other’s properties – what happens to one instantly happens to the other, even if they’re light-years apart.

“What entanglement allows us to do is train the photons in that light so that they arrive at the detector in a nice uniform sort of way,” Bowen says.