The connections that persist between distant but entangled particles are ''one of the deep mysteries of quantum mechanics,'' Dr. Chiao of the University of California, Berkeley, hailed the Geneva experiment as ''wonderful.''īut an underlying enigma of quantum mechanics remains unfathomed. One of the leading experimentalists in quantum optics, Dr. The key pads of sender and receiver are used for only one message and then destroyed this means that every letter of every message is enciphered by its own unique key and is therefore completely immune to cryptanalysis. #Particle faster than light seriesThe sequence defines a series of mathematical operations used to encipher the message, and the reverse sequence is used to decipher it. The receiver and sender of a secret message based on a one-time pad each must have a copy of the pad, which contains a random sequence of numbers. Gisin said, and he is working with the Swiss telecommunications agency to develop a cryptographic system based on entangled particle ''twins.'' Identical random-number sequences generated simultaneously by pairs of widely separated twins would serve as cipher keys equivalent to the ''one-time pads'' used by spies and governments to encode and decode ultra-secret messages. Eckert at Oxford University in England.ĭetails of the Swiss experiment will be described in a forthcoming technical paper, Dr. The idea for such a system, he said, originated with Dr. A quantum key, which is now within reach, would allow banks to carry out transactions with each other over optical fibers, completely safe from all possible code-breaking methods and from eavesdropping or interference.'' ''This research is interesting not only from a scientific and philosophical point of view, but because of a very practical consequence: we can now create a completely secure code. ''In principle, it should make no difference whether the correlation between twin particles occurs when they are separated by a few meters or by the entire universe,'' he said in an interview. By showing that the link between two entangled particles survives even when they are seven miles apart, Dr. Past experiments on entangled particles were carried out over distances of 100 yards or less. Since the 1970's, physicists have been testing a prediction of quantum theory that ''entangled'' particles continue to communicate with each other instantaneously even when very far apart.Įntangled particles are identical entities that share common origins and properties, and remain in instantaneous touch with each other, no matter how wide the gap between them. But when the paths of the two photons were properly adjusted and the results compared, the independent decisions by the paired photons always matched, even though there was no physical way for them to communicate with each other.Īlbert Einstein sneered at the very possibility of such a thing, calling it ''spooky action at a distance.'' Scientists still (somewhat shamefacedly) speak of the ''magic'' of ''quantum weirdness.'' And yet all experiments in recent years have shown that Einstein was wrong and that action at a distance is real. Since there was no way for the photons to communicate with each other, ''classical'' physics would predict that their independent choices would bear no relationship to each other. Reaching the ends of these fibers, the two photons were forced to make random choices between alternative, equally possible pathways. Gisin sent pairs of photons in opposite directions to villages north and south of Geneva along optical fibers of the kind used to transmit telephone calls. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and his colleagues last month was the most spectacular demonstration yet of the mysterious long-range connections that exist between quantum events, connections created from nothing at all, which in theory can reach instantaneously from one end of the universe to the other. IT was as if some ghostly bridge across the city of Geneva, Switzerland, had permitted two photons of light nearly seven miles apart to respond simultaneously to a stimulus applied to just one of them.
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