[extropy-chat] Lighting A Quantum Candle On The Nature of Reality

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/7/22/34816/0168
SciScoop - this is a story that only a physics geek
can love, but to us, it's a really big deal. No longer
must we curse the quantum darkness; somebody has lit a
single quantum candle. Quantum particle entanglement
is the closest thing to true Harry-Potter-style magic
we know of today. Any increase in our current paltry
knowledge of how this works has the potential to
revolutionize our understanding of the nature of
reality. From a UI press release: Like virtuosos
tuning their violins, researchers at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have tuned their
instruments and harmonized the production of entangled
photons, pushing rates to more than 1 million pairs
per second. 
The brighter and purer entangled states could assist
researchers in applications involving quantum
information processing - such as quantum computation,
teleportation and cryptography - and help scientists
better understand the mysterious transition from
quantum mechanics to classical physics. "Entangled
states are the quintessential feature of quantum
mechanics," said Paul Kwiat, a John Bardeen Professor
of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at
Illinois. "All the manifestations of quantum mechanics
in the world around us arise from the basic but
bizarre coupling that exists between entangled particles."