Three scientists in their 70s have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for translating the outlandish predictions of quantum theory into the foundations of a practical discipline in information and communications technology.
Alain Aspect from France, John Clauser from the US and Anton Zeilinger from Austria share the SKr10m ($900,000) prize for “demonstrating the potential to investigate and control particles that are in ‘entangled states’,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
When two particles are “entangled” — the scientific term for quantum linking — what happens to one of the pair has an instantaneous effect on the other one, however far apart they may be.