The crystals in Paul Kwiat's physics lab have none of the sparkling facets and points that New Agers believe heal the body and "enhance the life force." But his chunks of beta-barium borate do something even more magical.
The crystals produce special particles of light that, no matter how far apart they ever travel, will always have an eerie connection to one another across the vastest reaches of time and space. If a scientist makes a measurement on one particle, the other will "feel" it instantaneously.
Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance," and the very idea gave him fits. But in the 70 years since the great man insisted that spooky action had to be wrong, and dreamed up thought experiments to disprove it, evidence for it has gotten only stronger. Studies such as Prof. Kwiat's, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are closing the loopholes in earlier research. And although spooky action gives philosophers a lifetime's worth of enigmas to ponder, it may also become the basis of revolutionary technologies, such as quantum computing and quantum cryptography.
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