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We enable a world where data is alive. We make it right-time, right-place data so its available, discoverable, and safe. With Quantum, you have the insights you need to drive new opportunities, explore new paths, or accelerate the next groundbreaking discovery. Our bold, innovative, end-to-end data solutions allow forward-thinking organizationslike yoursto harness the enriched world of living data.

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About Quantum | Quantum

In a different corner of the social media universe, someone left comments on a link to Tuesday's post about quantum randomness declaring that they weren't aware of any practical applications of quantum physics. There's a kind ofLife of Brian absurdity to posting this on the Internet, which is a giant world-spanning, life-changing practical application of quantum mechanics. But just to make things a little clearer, here's a quick look at some of the myriad everyday things that depend on quantum physics for their operation.

Computers and Smartphones

Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini show off chips on a wafer built on so-called 22-nanometer technology... [+] at the Intel Developers' Forum in San Francisco, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009. Those chips are still being developed in Intel's factories and won't go into production until 2011. Each chip on the silicon "wafer" Otellini showed off has 2.9 billion transistors. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

At bottom, the entire computer industry is built on quantum mechanics. Modern semiconductor-based electronics rely on the band structure of solid objects. This is fundamentally a quantum phenomenon, depending on the wave nature of electrons, and because we understand that wave nature, we can manipulate the electrical properties of silicon. Mixing in just a tiny fraction of the right other elements changes the band structure and thus the conductivity; we know exactly what to add and how much to use thanks to our detailed understanding of the quantum nature of matter.

Stacking up layers of silicon doped with different elements allows us to make transistors on the nanometer scale. Millions of these packed together in a single block of material make the computer chips that power all the technological gadgets that are so central to modern life. Desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, even small household appliances and kids' toys are driven by computer chips that simply would not be possible to make without our modern understanding of quantum physics.

Lasers and Telecommunications

Green LED lights and rows of fibre optic cables are seen feeding into a computer server inside a... [+] comms room at an office in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. Vodafone Group Plc will ask telecommunications regulator Ofcom to guarantee that U.K. wireless carriers, which rely on BT's fiber network to transmit voice and data traffic across the country, are treated fairly when BT sets prices and connects their broadcasting towers. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Unless my grumpy correspondent was posting from the exact server hosting the comment files (which would be really creepy), odds are very good that comment took a path to me that also relies on quantum physics, specifically fiber optic telecommunications. The fibers themselves are pretty classical, but the light sources used to send messages down the fiber optic cables are lasers, which are quantum devices.

The key physics of the laser is contained in a 1917 paper Einstein wrote on the statistics of photons (though the term "photon" was coined later) and their interaction with atoms. This introduces the idea of stimulated emission, where an atom in a high-energy state encountering a photon of the right wavelength is induced to emit a second photon identical to the first. This process is responsible for two of the letters in the word "laser," originally an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation."

Any time you use a laser, whether indirectly by making a phone call, directly by scanning a UPC label on your groceries, or frivolously to torment a cat, you're making practical use of quantum physics.

Atomic Clocks and GPS

TO GO WITH AN AFP STORY BY ISABELLE TOUSSAINT A woman holds her smartphone next to her dog wearing a... [+] GPS system on its collar in La Celle-Saint-Cloud on July 1, 2015. The Global Positioning System (GPS) collar help owners to track their pets remotely. AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINA (Photo credit should read MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images)

One of the most common uses of Internet-connected smart phones is to find directions to unfamiliar places, another application that is critically dependent on quantum physics. Smartphone navigation is enabled by the Global Positioning System, a network of satellites each broadcasting the time. The GPS receiver in your phone picks up the signal from multiple clocks, and uses the different arrival times from different satellites to determine your distance from each of those satellites. The computer inside the receiver then does a bit of math to figure out the single point on the surface of the Earth that is that distance from those satellites, and locates you to within a few meters.

This trilateration relies on the constant speed of light to convert time to distance. Light moves at about a foot per nanosecond, so the timing accuracy of the satellite signals needs to be really good, so each satellite in the GPS constellation contains an ensemble of atomic clocks. These rely on quantum mechanics-- the "ticking" of the clock is the oscillation of microwaves driving a transition between two particular quantum states in a cesium atom (or rubidium, in some of the clocks).

Any time you use your phone to get you from point A to point B, the trip is made possible by quantum physics.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Leila Wehbe, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, talks about an experiment... [+] that used brain scans made in this brain-scanning MRI machine on campus, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014. Volunteers where scanned as each word of a chapter of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was flashed for half a second onto a screen inside the machine. Images showing combinations of data and graphics were collected. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

The transition used for atomic clocks is a "hyperfine" transition, which comes from a small energy shift depending on how the spin of an electron is oriented relative to the spin of the nucleus of the atom. Those spins are an intrinsically quantum phenomenon (actually, it comes in only when you include special relativity with quantum mechanics), causing the electrons, protons, and neutrons making up ordinary matter behave like tiny magnets.

This spin is responsible for the fourth and final practical application of quantum physics that I'll talk about today, namely Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The central process in an MRI machine is called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (but "nuclear" is a scary word, so it's avoided for a consumer medical process), and works by flipping the spins in the nuclei of hydrogen atoms. A clever arrangement of magnetic fields lets doctors measure the concentration of hydrogen appearing in different parts of the body, which in turn distinguishes between a lot of softer tissues that don't show up well in traditional x-rays.

So any time you, a loved one, or your favorite professional athlete undergoes an MRI scan, you have quantum physics to thank for their diagnosis and hopefully successful recovery.

So, while it may sometimes seem like quantum physics is arcane and remote from everyday experience (a self-inflicted problem for physicists, to some degree, as we often over-emphasize the weirder aspects when talking about quantum mechanics), in fact it is absolutely essential to modern life. Semiconductor electronics, lasers, atomic clocks, and magnetic resonance scanners all fundamentally depend on our understanding of the quantum nature of light and matter.

But, you know, other than computers, smartphones, the Internet, GPS, and MRI, what has quantum physics ever done for us?

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What Has Quantum Mechanics Ever Done For Us? - Forbes

Light is well known to exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties, as imaged here in this ... [+] 2015 photograph. What's less well appreciated is that matter particles also exhibit those wave-like properties. Even something as massive as a human being should have wave properties as well, although measuring them will be difficult.

Is it a wave or is it a particle? Never has such a simple question had such a complicated answer as in the quantum realm. The answer, perhaps frighteningly, depends on how you ask the question. Pass a beam of light through two slits, and it acts like a wave. Fire that same beam of light into a conducting plate of metal, and it acts like a particle. Under appropriate conditions, we can measure either wave-like or particle-like behavior for photons the fundamental quantum of light confirming the dual, and very weird, nature of reality.

This dual nature of reality isnt just restricted to light, either, but has been observed to apply to all quantum particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, even significantly large collections of atoms. In fact, if we can define it, we can quantify just how wave-like a particle or set of particles is. Even an entire human being, under the right conditions, can act like a quantum wave. (Although, good luck with measuring that.) Heres the science behind what that all means.

This illustration, of light passing through a dispersive prism and separating into clearly defined ... [+] colors, is what happens when many medium-to-high energy photons strike a crystal. If we struck this prism with a single photon and space were discrete, the crystal could only possibly move a discrete, finite number of spatial steps, but only a single photon would either reflect or transmit.

The debate over whether light behaves as a wave or a particle goes all the way back to the 17th century, when two titanic figures in physics history took opposite sides on the issue. On the one hand, Isaac Newton put forth a corpuscular theory of light, where it behaved the same way that particles did: moving in straight lines (rays) and refracting, reflecting, and carrying momentum just as any other kind of material would. Newton was able to predict many phenomena this way, and could explain how white light was composed of many other colors.

On the other hand, Christiaan Huygens favored the wave theory of light, noting features like interference and diffraction, which are inherently wave-like. Huygens work on waves couldnt explain some of the phenomena that Newtons corpuscular theory could, and vice versa. Things started to get more interesting in the early 1800s, however, as novel experiments began to truly reveal the ways in which light was intrinsically wave-like.

The wave-like properties of light, originally hypothesized by Christiaan Huygens, became even better ... [+] understood thanks to Thomas Young's two-slit experiments, where constructive and destructive interference effects showed themselves dramatically.

If you take a tank filled with water and create waves in it, and then set up a barrier with two slits that allow the waves on one side to pass through to the other, youll notice that the ripples interfere with one another. At some locations, the ripples will add up, creating larger magnitude ripples than a single wave alone would permit. At other locations, the ripples cancel one another out, leaving the water perfectly flat even as the ripples go by. This combination of an interference pattern with alternating regions of constructive (additive) and destructive (subtractive) interference is a hallmark of wave behavior.

That same wave-like pattern shows up for light, as first noted by Thomas Young in a series of experiments performed over 200 years ago. In subsequent years, scientists began to uncover some of the more counterintuitive wave properties of light, such as an experiment where monochromatic light shines around a sphere, creating not only a wave-like pattern on the outside of the sphere, but a central peak in the middle of the shadow as well.

The results of an experiment, showcased using laser light around a spherical object, with the actual ... [+] optical data. Note the extraordinary validation of Fresnel's wave theory of light prediction: that a bright, central spot would appear in the shadow cast by the sphere, verifying the "absurd" prediction of the wave theory of light. The original experiment was performed by Francois Arago.

Later in the 1800s, Maxwells theory of electromagnetism allowed us to derive a form of charge-free radiation: an electromagnetic wave that travels at the speed of light. At last, the light wave had a mathematical footing where it was simply a consequence of electricity and magnetism, an inevitable result of a self-consistent theory. It was by thinking about these very light waves that Einstein was able to devise and establish the special theory of relativity. The wave nature of light was a fundamental reality of the Universe.

But it wasnt a universal one. Light also behaves as a quantum particle in a number of important ways.

Those developments and realizations, when synthesized together, led to arguably the most mind-bending demonstration of quantum weirdness of all.

Double slit experiments performed with light produce interference patterns, as they do for any wave ... [+] you can imagine. The properties of different light colors is understood to be due to the differing wavelengths of monochromatic light of various colors. Redder colors have longer wavelengths, lower energies, and more spread-out interference patterns; bluer colors have shorter wavelengths, higher energies, and more closely bunched maxima and minima in the interference pattern.

If you take a photon and fire it at a barrier that has two slits in it, you can measure where that photon strikes a screen a significant distance away on the other side. If you start adding up these photons, one-at-a-time, youll start to see a pattern emerge: an interference pattern. The same pattern that emerged when we had a continuous beam of light where we assumed that many different photons were all interfering with one another emerges when we shoot photons one-at-a-time through this apparatus. Somehow, the individual photons are interfering with themselves.

Normally, conversations proceed around this experiment by talking about the various experimental setups you can make to attempt to measure (or not measure) which slit the photon goes through, destroying or maintaining the interference pattern in the process. That discussion is a vital part of exploring the nature of the dual nature of quanta, as they behave as both waves and particles depending on how you interact with them. But we can do something else thats equally fascinating: replace the photons in the experiment with massive particles of matter.

Electrons exhibit wave properties just as well as photons do, and can be used to construct images or ... [+] probe particle sizes just as well as light can. (And in some cases, they can even do a superior job.) This wave-like nature extends to all matter particles, even composite particles and, in theory, macroscopic ones.

Your initial thought might go something along the lines of, okay, well photons can act as both waves and particles, but thats because photons are massless quanta of radiation. They have a wavelength, which explains the wave-like behavior, but they also have a certain amount of energy that they carry, which explains the particle-like behavior. And therefore, you might expect, that these matter particles would always act like particles, since they have mass, they carry energy, and, well, theyre literally defined as particles!

But in the early 1920s, physicist Louis de Broglie had a different idea. For photons, he noted, each quantum has an energy and a momentum, which are related to Planck's constant, the speed of light, and the frequency and wavelength of each photon. Each quantum of matter also has an energy and a momentum, and also experiences the same values of Plancks constant and the speed of light. By rearranging terms in the exact same way as theyd be written down for photons, de Broglie was able to define a wavelength for both photons and matter particles: the wavelength is simply Plancks constant divided by the particles momentum.

When electrons are fired at a target, they will diffract off at an angle. Measuring the electrons' ... [+] momenta enables us to determine whether their behavior is wave-like or particle-like, and the 1927 Davisson-Germer experiment was the first experimental confirmation of de Broglie's "matter wave" theory.

Mathematical definitions are nice, of course, but the real test of physical ideas always comes from experiments and observations: you have to compare your predictions with actual tests of the Universe itself. In 1927, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer fired electrons at a target that produced diffraction for photons, and the same diffraction pattern resulted. Contemporaneously. George Paget fired electrons at thin metal foils, also producing diffraction patterns. Somehow, the electrons themselves, definitively matter particles, were also behaving as waves.

Subsequent experiments have revealed this wave-like behavior for many different forms of matter, including forms that are significantly more complicated than the point-like electron. Composite particles, like protons and neutrons, display this wave-like behavior as well. Neutral atoms, which can be cooled down to nanokelvin temperatures, have demonstrated de Broglie wavelengths that are larger than a micron: some ten thousand times larger than the atom itself. Even molecules with as many as 2000 atoms have been demonstrated to display wave-like properties.

In 2019. scientists achieved a quantum superposition of the largest molecule ever: one with over ... [+] 2000 individual atoms and a total mass of more than 25,000 atomic mass units. Here, the delocalization of the massive molecules used in the experiment is illustrated.

Under most circumstances, the momentum of a typical particle (or system of particles) is sufficiently large that the effective wavelength associated with it is far too small to measure. A dust particle moving at just 1 millimeter per second has a wavelength thats around 10-21 meters: about 100 times smaller than the smallest scales humanitys ever probed at the Large Hadron Collider.

For an adult human being moving at the same speed, our wavelength is a minuscule 10-32 meters, or just a few hundred times larger than the Planck scale: the length scale at which physics ceases to make sense. Yet even with an enormous, macroscopic mass and some 1028 atoms making up a full-grown human the quantum wavelength associated with a fully formed human is large enough to have physical meaning. In fact, for most real particles, only two things determine your wavelength:

Matter waves, at least in theory, can be used to amplify or impede certain signals, which could bear ... [+] fruit for a number of interesting applications, including the potential for rendering certain objects effectively invisible. This is one potential approach towards a real-life cloaking device.

In general, that means there are two things you can do to coax matter particles into behaving as waves. One is that you can reduce the mass of the particles to as small a value as possible, as lower-mass particles will have larger de Broglie wavelengths, and hence larger-scale (and easier to observe) quantum behaviors. But another thing you can do is reduce the speed of the particles youre dealing with. Slower speeds, which are achieved at lower temperatures, translate into smaller values of momentum, which means larger de Broglie wavelengths and, again, larger-scale quantum behaviors.

This property of matter opens up a fascinating new area of feasible technology: atomic optics. Whereas most of the imaging we conduct is strictly done with optics i.e., light we can use slow-moving atomic beams to observe nanoscale structures without disrupting them in the ways that high-energy photons would. As of 2020, there is an entire sub-field of condensed matter physics devoted to ultracold atoms and the study and application of their wave behavior.

The 2009 invention of the quantum gas microscope enabled the 2015 measurement of fermionic atoms in ... [+] a quantum lattice, which could lead to breakthroughs in superconductivity and other practical applications.

There are many pursuits in science that seem so esoteric that most of us have a hard time envisioning how theyd ever become useful. In todays world, many fundamental endeavors for new highs in particle energies; for new depths in astrophysics; for new lows in temperature seem like purely intellectual exercises. And yet, many technological breakthroughs that we take for granted today were unforeseeable by those who laid the scientific foundations.

Heinrich Hertz, who created and sent radio waves for the first time, thought he was merely confirming Maxwells electromagnetic theory. Einstein never imagined that relativity could enable GPS systems. The founders of quantum mechanics never considered advances in computation or the invention of the transistor. But today, were absolutely certain that the closer we get to absolute zero, the more the entire field of atomic optics and nano-optics will advance. Perhaps, someday, well even be able to measure quantum effects for entire human beings. Before you volunteer, though, you might be happier to put a cryogenically frozen human to the test instead!

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In Quantum Physics, Even Humans Act As Waves - Forbes

Fact that observing a situation changes it

In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.[1][2] This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A common example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire; this is difficult to do without letting out some of the air, thus changing the pressure. Similarly, seeing non-luminous objects requires light hitting the object, and causing it to reflect that light. While the effects of observation are often negligible, the object still experiences a change. This effect can be found in many domains of physics, but can usually be reduced to insignificance by using different instruments or observation techniques.

A notable example of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena can change the measured results of this experiment. Despite the "observer effect" in the double-slit experiment being caused by the presence of an electronic detector, the experiment's results have been misinterpreted by some to suggest that a conscious mind can directly affect reality.[3] The need for the "observer" to be conscious is not supported by scientific research, and has been pointed out as a misconception rooted in a poor understanding of the quantum wave function and the quantum measurement process.[4][5][6]

An electron is detected upon interaction with a photon; this interaction will inevitably alter the velocity and momentum of that electron. It is possible for other, less direct means of measurement to affect the electron. It is also necessary to distinguish clearly between the measured value of a quantity and the value resulting from the measurement process. In particular, a measurement of momentum is non-repeatable in short intervals of time. A formula (one-dimensional for simplicity) relating involved quantities, due to Niels Bohr (1928) is given by

The measured momentum of the electron is then related to vx, whereas its momentum after the measurement is related to vx. This is a best-case scenario.[7]

In electronics, ammeters and voltmeters are usually wired in series or parallel to the circuit, and so by their very presence affect the current or the voltage they are measuring by way of presenting an additional real or complex load to the circuit, thus changing the transfer function and behavior of the circuit itself. Even a more passive device such as a current clamp, which measures the wire current without coming into physical contact with the wire, affects the current through the circuit being measured because the inductance is mutual.

In thermodynamics, a standard mercury-in-glass thermometer must absorb or give up some thermal energy to record a temperature, and therefore changes the temperature of the body which it is measuring.

The theoretical foundation of the concept of measurement in quantum mechanics is a contentious issue deeply connected to the many interpretations of quantum mechanics. A key focus point is that of wave function collapse, for which several popular interpretations assert that measurement causes a discontinuous change into an eigenstate of the operator associated with the quantity that was measured, a change which is not time-reversible.

More explicitly, the superposition principle ( = nann) of quantum physics dictates that for a wave function , a measurement will result in a state of the quantum system of one of the m possible eigenvalues fn , n = 1, 2, ..., m, of the operator F which in the space of the eigenfunctions n , n = 1, 2, ..., m.

Once one has measured the system, one knows its current state; and this prevents it from being in one of its other statesit has apparently decohered from them without prospects of future strong quantum interference.[8][9][10] This means that the type of measurement one performs on the system affects the end-state of the system.

An experimentally studied situation related to this is the quantum Zeno effect, in which a quantum state would decay if left alone, but does not decay because of its continuous observation. The dynamics of a quantum system under continuous observation are described by a quantum stochastic master equation known as the Belavkin equation.[11][12][13] Further studies have shown that even observing the results after the photon is produced leads to collapsing the wave function and loading a back-history as shown by delayed choice quantum eraser.[14]

When discussing the wave function which describes the state of a system in quantum mechanics, one should be cautious of a common misconception that assumes that the wave function amounts to the same thing as the physical object it describes. This flawed concept must then require existence of an external mechanism, such as a measuring instrument, that lies outside the principles governing the time evolution of the wave function , in order to account for the so-called "collapse of the wave function" after a measurement has been performed. But the wave function is not a physical object like, for example, an atom, which has an observable mass, charge and spin, as well as internal degrees of freedom. Instead, is an abstract mathematical function that contains all the statistical information that an observer can obtain from measurements of a given system. In this case, there is no real mystery in that this mathematical form of the wave function must change abruptly after a measurement has been performed.

A consequence of Bell's theorem is that measurement on one of two entangled particles can appear to have a nonlocal effect on the other particle. Additional problems related to decoherence arise when the observer is modeled as a quantum system, as well.

The uncertainty principle has been frequently confused with the observer effect, evidently even by its originator, Werner Heisenberg.[15] The uncertainty principle in its standard form describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time if we increase the precision in measuring one quantity, we are forced to lose precision in measuring the other.[16]An alternative version of the uncertainty principle,[17] more in the spirit of an observer effect,[18] fully accounts for the disturbance the observer has on a system and the error incurred, although this is not how the term "uncertainty principle" is most commonly used in practice.

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Observer effect (physics) - Wikipedia

Subatomic particles can be linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space.

But this strange and spooky phenomenon hadnt been proven until Walnut Creek-based physicist John Clauser performed a pioneering experiment at UC-Berkeley in 1972 an accomplishment that on Tuesday was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Clauser, 79, shares the $900,000 prize with two fellow physicists who followed in his footsteps: Alain Aspect of Universit Paris-Saclay and cole Polytechnique in France, and Anton Zeilinger, of the University of Vienna in Austria.

This discovery, now a core concept of quantum mechanics, could revolutionize computing, cryptography and the transfer of information via what is known as quantum teleportation, according to the Nobel committee.

Working independently, the three scientists conducted experiments that demonstrated quantum entanglement, an odd phenomenon in which one particle can instantaneously influence the behavior of other particles even if they are far away, such as at opposite sides of the universe.

Clausers work measured the behavior of pairs of tiny photons, which were entangled, or acting in concert. It showed, in essence, that nature is capable of sending signals faster than the speed of light.

This phenomenon, the foundation of todays quantum computers and other modern quantum technologies, is so weird that physicist Albert Einstein called it spooky action at a distance.

Today we honor three physicists whose pioneering experiments showed us that the strange quantum world of entanglement is not just the microworld of atoms, and certainly not a virtual world of mysticism or science fiction, but the real world we live in, said Thors Hans Hansson of the Nobel Committee for Physics during a news conference in Stockholm.

Clauser, now retired, spends his days racing his 40-foot yacht Bodacious in San Francisco Bay, the greatest place in the world for sailing.

In an interview Tuesday, he told the Bay Area News Grouphe was thrilled by the 3 a.m. news from Stockholm and the tsunami of congratulatory calls. It took me over an hour to get my pants on, he joked.

Clauser, born a year after Pearl Harbor in 1942, grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore where his father had been hired to create Johns Hopkins Universitys aeronautics department.

He credits his father with his love of electronic tinkering, an essential skill for future experimental discoveries.

After school, when he was supposed to be doing homework, mostly what I would do is just sort of wander around the lab and gawk at all of the nifty laboratory equipment, he said in an oral history recorded by the American Physics Institute.

My dad was absolutely a marvelous teacher, my whole formative years, he recalled. Every time I asked a question, he knew the answer and would answer it in gory detail so that I would understand it. I mean, he didnt force feed me, but he did it in such a way that I continuously hungered for more.

Clauser first came to California in the early 1960s to study physics at the California Institute of Technology, then earned his PhD at Columbia University.

The study of Advanced Quantum Mechanics a field he would later revolutionize initially daunted him. He didnt understand its mathematical manipulations, and repeated the class three times before earning the requisite B grade.

I just didnt really believe it all. I was convinced that there were things that were wrong, he said. My Dad had always taught me, Son, look at the data. People will have lots of fancy theories, but always go back to the original data and see if you come to the same conclusions. Whenever I do that, I come up with very different conclusions.

That skepticism paved the way for his future Nobel. While working at UC Berkeley, he stumbled upon a fascinating theory by Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, which explored what entanglements spooky action said about photons behavior and the fundamental nature of reality.

But wheres the experimental evidence? Clauser wondered. He knew Bells theorem could be tested.

He told PBSs Nova how he rummaged around the hidden storage rooms of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, scavenging for old equipment to design the experiments he needed.

There are two kinds of people, really. Those who kind of like to use old junk and/or build it themselves from scratch. And those who go out and buy shiny new boxes, he said. Ive gotten pretty good at dumpster diving.

He faced criticism from many fellow physicists. Everybody told me I was crazy, and I was going ruin my career by wasting his time on such a philosophical question, he recalled.

In an experiment in the sub-basement of UC Berkeleys Birge Hall, conducted alongside the late fundamental physicist Stuart Freedman, he measured quantum entanglement by firing thousands of photons in opposite directions. They showed that the photons could act in concert despite being physically separated.

The experimentwas so novel that it was completely underappreciated at the time, said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell. It was 10 years before physicists started to realize how quantum entanglement could be exploited. That was when the next decisive experiments were done, leading to the new quantum era we are now experiencing.

Unable to find a job as a professor, Clauser moved to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to do controlled fusion plasma physics experiments but later left because he refused to do classified work.

His insights are now the scientific underpinning for todays efforts to develop quantum cryptography, a method of encryption that uses the properties of quantum mechanics to secure and transmit data in a way that cannot be hacked.

Such powerful commercial applications were inconceivable at the time, he said.

I was totally unaware of how much money and interest there was in cryptography, he said. Heck, most of my computers didnt even require passwords. The only reason I have them on now is because we have all of the ones in the house all networked, and you cant put it on a network without putting passwords on them.

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Bay Area physicist and quantum physics pioneer wins Nobel Prize