Quantum entanglement is a property of physics where two particles will act together and become a system. They behave like one object, but remain two separate objects. It is as if they now sit on the same teeter-totter seesaw. No matter how long the seesaw is, even if it is one million miles long, if one end is down the other end must be up, and this happens instantly. Even though each particle can tell what the other is doing, they do not send messages back and forth. There are no messages between the particles saying, ‘I’m going down, therefore, you must go up’ and waiting for the particle to receive the message. Yet, the particles are always connected and can behave as one.
Quantum Entanglement is one of the concepts that led Albert Einstein to dislike the theory of Quantum Mechanics. Along with his colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, Einstein used entanglement to try to disprove quantum mechanics. Einstein called entanglement ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Years later, however, John Bell proved with his theorem that entanglement is real and actually happens to tiny particles. Bell’s theorem was experimentally verified for the first time in 1980 by the French physicist Alain Aspect. Although one can probe a nearby particle to instantly affect its partner particle, it is impossible to control how they end up. In other words, probing the particle will influence its partner particle, but it is impossible to choose how to influence them. Therefore it is impossible to use quantum entanglement to send messages.
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