Quantum physics can fly in the face of human intuition—even that of a physicist such as Mario Krenn at the University of Vienna. This counterintuitive quality makes it difficult for researchers to design experiments to explore the field. Now, to avoid intuitive pitfalls, Krenn and his colleagues have devised a computer program to automatically design new quantum experiments that they would not have thought of themselves.
The way that all known particles behave can be explained with quantum physics. A major feature of this branch of physics is that the world becomes a vague, bizarre place at its very smallest levels. For example, atoms and other basic building blocks of the universe can exist in states of flux known as superpositions, meaning they can seemingly be located in two or more places at the same time, or spin in opposite directions simultaneously; and with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, two or more objects can get connected such that what happens to one instantaneously affects whatever is linked to it, no matter how far apart they are in the universe.
The surreal nature of quantum physics can be hard to swallow, even for scientists. The most famous analogy for superposition, Schrödinger's cat, which presents a cat that may be simultaneously alive and dead, was intended by physicist Erwin Schrödinger to highlight the absurdity of the concept of superposition, not to popularize it. In addition, Einstein famously rebelled against the concept of entanglement, calling it “spooky action at a distance.” Numerous experiments, however, have proved quantum physics's stranger phenomena over the decades—for instance, Krenn's advisor Anton Zeilinger helped set the current record distance for entanglement of 144 kilometers, from La Palma to Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
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