Quantum entanglement, the spooky action at a distance that promises to be so useful for things like high-powered computing and security, is generally considered a function of the tiny world. It’s easy — OK, not easy, but relatively practical nowadays — to take two particles or two microscopic things and intertwine their fates. Now for the first time, scientists have accomplished quantum entanglement on the macro scale, entangling two millimeter-sized diamonds.
The findings, published in this week’s issue of Science, are a potential major leap for both quantum and classical mechanics. It’s the first time entanglement has been achieved between two fairly large objects — and at room temperature to boot.
As regular readers know, entanglement is the process of connecting two separate things, be they photons or nanoscale objects, so that they behave the same no matter their distance apart. What happens to one particle also happens to the other, even if they are separated by the entire universe.