'Spooky action' quantum superpositioning may disprove Einstein

A team of scientists may have disproven Einstein by proving quantum superposition. Physics can be difficult to understand, quantum mechanics is even more so. Even Einstein took a "why not both?" approach to tackling the wave and particle behaviors of light. One thing Einstein did not reconcile was particle superposition. Quantum superpositioning is the theory that subatomic particles have the ability to be in more than one state at the same time. Einstein actually didn't give any credence to the theory and dubbed it "spooky action at a distance."

This latest news originates from a joint research team from the University of Tokyo and Griffith University (Australia). In their experiment, the scientists split a photon in half, sending it to two separate labs for measurement. The team was testing whether the choice of measurement in one lab could cause a change in the local quantum state of the split photon in the other lab.

According to their paper, published in the journal, Nature Communications, measuring the particle in one place did affect the particle's state in another place.

Superpositioning research has applications in field of quantum computing, wherein elusive qubits—small packets of quantum information are read as binary numbers 0 or 1. Quantum computing has the potential to solve insanely complex mathematical calculations that would take a supercomputer of today much, much longer to solve. There are many caveats to quantum computing technology; one is that the computer must run at a temperature of nearly absolute zero, and another is that there quantum computing is still error prone. Most of these errors arise from bit flips, when a the state of a qubit is read incorrectly. As more experiments like this are carried out, perhaps scientists may unlock the secrets to efficient quantum computing.

Want to know more about quantum entanglement? Decide for yourself if it's "spooky action" or science.

Source: Live Science