Einstein’s “spooky action” just survived one of physics’ most extreme tests
Physicists have detected strong evidence that heavy, fleeting Z bosons can become quantum entangled during Higgs boson decays at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
Physicists have detected strong evidence that heavy, fleeting Z bosons can become quantum entangled during Higgs boson decays at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
The short version
- The result shows that Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” survives even under some of the most extreme conditions ever created in a laboratory.
- Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped demonstrate that one of quantum physics' strangest phenomena, quantum entanglement, can persist even among some of the heaviest and shortest-lived particles ever produced.
- The finding, made with CERN's powerful Large Hadron Collider, has been published in Physical Review Letters .
What happened
Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles share properties in such a way that measurements of one can reveal information about the other, even when the particles are separated. The connection is one of the most counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics and has challenged physicists' understanding of reality for decades.
Why it matters
What remained less clear was whether entanglement could survive under far more extreme conditions, including the violent, high-energy particle collisions produced at CERN.
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