Quantum Photo Finish

摘要

In a dark lab in Vienna, physicists did something incredible: They shined a laser through a cat-shaped hole in some cardboard, resulting in a glowing, red feline image. The twist: The light in the image didn't go through the hole in the cardboard. The work, published in August, started with a single beam of light. To create a typical image, the entire beam would shine on the cardboard hole. Some light particles, or photons, would pass through, making up an image. The other photons would be blocked. This time, the physicists took advantage of a weird quantum process called entanglement. Entangled photons are fundamentally linked, carrying some of the same information about each other even after they're separated. Think twins with ESP. "Spooky action at a distance," according to Albert Einstein.