• Question: What is subatomic particle entanglement?

    Asked by Cameron :) to Stefan on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I don’t work in particle or quantum physics, so this question terrifies me slightly. However! I did do a small project on it at university, where I learned a little about it.

      One of the weirder outcomes in the field of Quantum Mechanics is that thanks to the uncertainty principle, probing or observing a quantum system can change its state. Quantum entanglement is the really bizarre situation whereby paired or entangled particles appear to somehow know what the others quantum state is (because by measuring the system, you measure the whole entangled pair – and hence change the quantum state by observing it) – despite there being know known way of transmitting that information between them, even if the particles have large distances between them.

      Simply put, ‘entangled’ particles can somehow communicate with each other… Weird!

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