Einstein was wrong
Groundbreaking test reveals spooky ‘quantum entanglement’ phenomenon is real
For nearly a century, scientists have struggled with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, which appears to break the classical laws of physics.
It seems to show that pairs of sub-atomic particles can be invisibly connected in a way that transcends time and space.
Now, a groundbreaking experiment has provided the clearest proof yet that this quantum effect - which Albert Einstein famously dismissed as ‘spooky action at a distance’ - is in fact real.
Quantum entanglement describes how the state of one sub-atomic particle can instantly influence the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are.
This offended Einstein, since passing information between two points in space faster than the speed of light is supposed to be impossible.
In 1964, the scientist John Stewart Bell devised an experiment designed to rule out hidden variables that could offer a non-weird explanation for ‘action at a distance’.
But all the ‘Bell tests’ performed still contained ‘loopholes’ that, according to critics, could invalidate proof of entanglement.
Now, writing in the journal Nature, scientists say two of the most important loopholes have been closed by a new version of the test.
The Dutch team entangled electrons held in tiny diamond traps 0.8 miles (1.3km) apart on opposite sides of the campus at Delft University. They did this in such a way that there was no chance of them ‘secretly’ communicating. Nor was there any possibility of a subset of paired particles being detected that was not representative of all those present.