Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)
One of the quietest revolutions of our current century has been the entry of quantum mechanics into our everyday technology. It used to be that quantum effects were confined to physics laboratories and delicate experiments. But modern technology increasingly relies on quantum mechanics for its basic operation, and the importance of quantum effects will only grow in the decades to come. As such, physicist Miguel F. Morales has taken on the herculean task of explaining quantum mechanics to laypeople in this seven-part series (no math, we promise). Below is the sixth story in the series, but you can always find the starting story plus a landing page for the entire series thus far on site.
Throughout our quantum adventures to date, we’ve seen a bunch of interesting quantum effects. So for our last major excursion, let’s venture into a particularly creepy corner of the quantum wood: today, we’re going to see entanglement and measurement order.
Together, these two concepts create some of the most counterintuitive effects in quantum mechanics. They are so counterintuitive that this is probably a good time to re-emphasize that nothing in this series is speculative—everything we’ve seen is backed by hundreds of observations. Sometimes the world is much stranger than we expect it to be.
Read 57 remaining paragraphs | Comments
