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Alan Aspect, John F Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the award Nobel prize in physics for their outstanding achievements in quantum mechanics – the study of the behavior of particles and atoms – announced the organizing committee in Stockholm on Tuesday.
The trio won out in their experiments over what’s known as entanglement – the mind-boggling phenomenon when two particles act as one and affect each other, even though they can be a vast distance from each other, on opposite sides of a planet or even the solar system.
It has been one of the most controversial elements of quantum mechanics and has been memorably described Particle physicist Albert Einstein called it “terrifying work at a distance.”
Decades after Einstein’s death, experiments by the three physicists showed that quantum entanglement was real, not just theoretical, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the trio’s work “laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology.”
Aspect, Clauser and Tesselinger were born in France, California, and Austria, respectively. Their discoveries added to and enhanced the work of John Stuart Bell, whose theory changed the understanding of the scientific world of quantum mechanics.
“I am still somewhat shocked but it is a very positive shock. Zeilinger, a professor at the University of Vienna in Austria, told reporters in Stockholm shortly after hearing that he had won the award.
The winners’ work confirmed that “quantum mechanics does indeed have a utility in real-world applications,” Michael Moloney, CEO of the American Institute of Physics, told CNN.
“This theory is not just to explain all the counterintuitive nature of the quantum world. It has shown that by measuring some predictions, we can engage in applications such as quantum computing and quantum cryptography.”
Moloney said the trio’s discoveries “have the potential to change our world in terms of things that are really practical, like being able to do quantum computing; solutions that will help us with everything from vaccines to technology to weather forecasting.”
“There are many different types of computations we can do with quantum information science that we can’t do with classical computers,” he added.
Tuesday’s winners have been held in high esteem within academia for several decades. Analytics firm Clarivate said Tuesday that it expected Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger to win the Nobel Prize in 2011, “based on a series of highly cited, independently published research papers that appeared in the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s, respectively.”
“Our selection also recognized the obvious importance of experimental verification of ‘spooky action at a distance’, a phenomenon of quantum mechanics that exhausts our imaginations,” the company said.
Physicists have struggled to explain how quantum mechanics allows two particles to influence the behavior of the other.
“That these two particles are intertwined in such a way that, no matter how far apart they are from each other, making a measurement on one determines the measurement on the other. That kind of thing blows your mind as a physicist,” Maloney said.
“100 years or so ago, when Einstein came up with this, it was really like… It doesn’t make sense. The speed of light, you know, is the classic limit, so how can they do that? So that’s what they’ve been struggling with for so long” .
This phenomenon could allow for the secure transmission of information over vast distances between quantum computers using features of entanglement — a process Zeilinger described as “quantum teleportation.”
Despite the connotations of science fiction, he rejected the idea of teleporting people.
“It’s not like in the Star Trek movies it is moving something – certainly not a person – at some distance, but the point is using entanglement, you can move all the information that an object carries to another place… where the object is reconfigured. Yet (done) Only using very small particles.”
Zeilinger also praised the contribution of the more than 100 students he has worked with over the years. His advice to young people was to “do what you find interesting.”
“I must say that I have always been interested in quantum mechanics from the first moment I heard about it. I have been struck by theoretical predictions that do not fit with the usual intuition one might have.”
He added that much remains unknown about quantum mechanics: “I’m curious what we’ll see in the next 10 or 20 years.”
The three scientists will share a prize money of 10 million Swedish crowns ($915,000).
The most prestigious Nobel Prizes are handed out throughout the week; On Monday, Swedish geneticist Svante Papu won a medicine award To pioneer the use of ancient DNA to unlock the secrets of human evolution.
Nobel Prize winners in the fields of chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week, and the 2022 list will conclude on Monday with an economics prize.
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