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If you haven't heard yet, the Nobel Peace Prize in physics for 2022 has been awarded to three scientists: John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger. They won for proving the universe isn't real, at least, not locally. While this may send you into a fit of existential dread, it's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it will lead to really significant advancements in quantum mechanics. I know this sounds like an intimidating subject, but it is my goal to break it down simply because it's honestly really incredible (in my humble, but nerdy opinion).
So, what does it mean to be locally real? Well, for something to be local, it has to be affected by its immediate environment in time and space and that influence cannot travel faster than the speed of light. We all know Einstein's famous formula E = mc^2. It actually just means energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. And this speed 'c' is considered the speed limit of the universe; nothing can travel faster than light. 'Real', in this case, means the object still has the same properties even when it's not actively being observed or measured. To summarize, your phone is locally real because it is affected by its surroundings, like when you pick it up. When you angrily fling your phone across the room because your cryptocurrency continues to dive, it takes a few seconds, not fractions of a second, to land on the floor. It also doesn't magically change into a duck when you're not looking at it or cease to exist at all. As it turns out, the same cannot be said about the universe. We were able to test this by experimenting with a property of quantum physics called quantum entanglement.
To start breaking this down, let's start with picturing the scale. We can picture an atom from our high school textbooks, which makes up everything in our universe. These atoms are then made up of three smaller particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. More recently, we figured out there are four more types of subatomic particles that are even smaller. A proton is made up of two up quarks and one down quark. These particles are so small, we don't know their exact size, but we know they're less than 10^-18 meters in diameter. The field of quantum physics is interested in how really small things behave because they seem to follow different rules from things that are really big. Galaxies and stars follow more similar physics to cars and people than these tiny particles do. This is why quantum physics exists.
Scientists have been studying quantum particles for a while now and have noticed some interesting properties, one of which being quantum entanglement. When a pair of subatomic particles interact with each other, they become an entangled pair. Once entangled, their properties influence each other. For example, quarks have a property called spin and it can either be up or down. So if one particle has up spin, we know the other one in the pair will have down spin. And this works every time without fail. It's very cool that these tiny particles can communicate with each other, but why do we care?
Two main reasons: they do not have up or down spin until they are observed and once they are, they change instantaneously - faster than the speed of light. I know I just told you nothing could travel faster than the speed of light - that it was the universe's speed limit - and it was, until we studied quantum entanglement. Talk about instant messaging! And what's even more impressive is that distance does not affect it at all. The two quarks could be right next to each other or on opposite ends of the universe and it will still be instantaneous. Scientists were also surprised that the results were always the same. It didn't matter when, where, or what particles were being observed. If one particle had up spin, then the other one would have down spin, and vice versa.
Crazier still is these subatomic particles didn't "pick" a spin until they were observed. This is what is known as quantum superposition. Before a scientist physically tries to measure the spin, the particle exists in a state of limbo. Before we look at the particle, it exists having up spin, down spin, both, AND neither, all at once. And no, I don't mean it could possibly or theoretically be one or the other - it is in all of these states simultaneously. Okay, I know you can feel your head about to explode. Let's frame this with a popular thought experiment: Schrodinger's Cat. Imagine a guy named Schrodinger puts his cat into a box with a live bomb, set to randomly detonate or not detonate in one minute (poor kitty). He leaves the room and comes back in one minute. Before he opens the box, he doesn't know if the cat is alive or dead. It's only when he opens the box and looks inside that he will know for certain. So, we can say the cat is neither alive or dead in the moments before he opens the box. This is the same concept as observing properties of subatomic particles. Using the previous definition of 'real', we can say these particles are not real because they do not exist in the same way when they are not being actively observed.
What sets these Nobel Prize winners apart is the local part of the equation. Previous scientists proposed that the environment would affect the outcome in some way. Going back to the cat example, Schrodinger would know if the cat was alive or dead before he opened the box if he heard meowing from the box or saw char marks on the box from the explotion. Therefore, the cat had to be either alive or dead before he physically looked because there are other measurable variables to take into consideration. This is not how it works in the quantum realm. They found that the environment does not affect the state of the particles and there are no other measurable variables. The universe is made up of these tiny particles that, when entangles, can send messages faster than the speed of light, have any properties when we're not looking, and are not affected by their surroundings, This leads us to conclude the universe is not locally real.
So, is it time to panic? No. These discoveries are trying to be harvested in the form of quantum computing, which would bring about huge advancements in technology, We all knew our universe was strange and mysterious. As humans, we try to make sense of it the best we can because we are curious creatures. As we continue on, I'm sure we will find things even stranger and more unusual. But for now, just buckle up and enjoy the ride.