Diamonds display Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’

Nature reports that quantum entanglement, odd behaviour at the subatomic level coined ‘spooky action at a distance’ by Albert Einstein, has been scaled up to the level of two macroscopic diamonds.

Potential applications include quantum computing and communication.

Quantum entanglement — interdependence of quantum states between particles not in physical contact — has been well established between quantum particles such as atoms at ultra-cold temperatures. But like most quantum effects, it doesn’t tend to survive either at room temperature or in objects large enough to see with the naked eye.

A team led by Ian Walmsley, a physicist at the University of Oxford, UK, found a way to overcome both those limitations . . .

Diamonds were recently found to be useful for cryptography, also utilizing another phenomenon based on quantum mechanics.

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