Entanglement between particles happens because little particles can push and pull on each other, just like big objects do in terms of gravity. If nothing else is acting on those particles, then there are certain things before and after the particles act on each other that have to stay the same. For example, the total momentum of both particles put together would be (roughly) the same before and after they act on each other.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us we can never know the momentum of a particle exactly, or even the total momentum of both particles put together. In fact, we can't ever know exactly what we will measure the momentum of a particle to be before we measure it, but we do know always that the total momentum of the two particles put together doesn't change when the particles act on each other.
In order to be sure that the total momentum is the same before and after the particles act on one another, we need to describe a pair of particles as a single quantum system rather than a pair of quantum systems. If this were not true, the Conservation law for momentum would be violated due to the quantum uncertainty of the momentum of each particle.
Even though each particle has a lot of information about the other, they do not send messages to each other. There are no messages between the particles saying, "I'm going down, therefore, you must go up" and waiting for the particle to receive the message. Yet, the particles are always connected and can behave as one.
Quantum entanglement is one of the concepts that led Albert Einstein to dislike the theory of quantum mechanics. With his co-workers, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, Einstein used entanglement to try to show weaknesses in quantum mechanics. Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance". He said this because he did not believe that quantum particles could affect one another faster than the speed of light. He tried to show that this weird effect means that quantum mechanics gives an incomplete picture of what really goes on and that in the future it will be taken care of with extra "hidden" variables.
Erwin Schrödinger talked about entanglement in the same article where he described Schrödinger's cat.
Years later, John Bell showed with his theorem that we can tell if this "spooky action at a distance" is real or not. After that, experiments using Bell's theorem proved that entanglement actually happens between tiny particles.
Scientists are trying to use quantum entanglement for many different things. Some things are sending completely secret messages (passing encrypted notes that can't be understood if intercepted), and making computers faster than ever before thought possible. However, entanglement between a pair of particles is a very delicate thing and is easily destroyed. Because of this, it is difficult to use quantum entanglement to do these things. Currently, many scientists are working on making stronger systems where entanglement is stronger and lasts longer to try to do these things more easily.
Although you can do some things to one particle to try to cause a change in its partner particle, you can't use this (by itself) to send information from one particle to another because it is only possible to control how likely the change will happen. The outcome of whatever measurement you make on a single particle is completely random, and so is the change that results in the partner particle. In other words, changing one particle may change its partner particle, but you cannot guarantee exactly which way you will influence them. Because scientists cannot control exactly what changes between entangled particles occur, it is not possible to use quantum entanglement alone to send messages. If you also send information about the state of the single particle classically (by phone, radio, carrier pigeon, etc.), you can use the entanglement they share to teleport the quantum state of one particle to another particle.
Also, without sending information about the partner particle, there's no way to tell if a given particle is single or half of an entangled pair. With no outside information, a single particle is completely like any other. It's only when you can receive information about the other particle that you will be able to figure out if your particle is one part of an entangled pair. No one can use entanglement to send information faster than the speed of light because you would need another faster than light communicator to do it.
Amin Maalouf
Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese author. He was born on 25 February, 1949 in Beirut, Lebanon. He studied sociology at the French University in Beirut. He was the director of the Beirut daily newspaper "an-Nahar". But, he left the country 1975 at the start of the Lebanese Civil War. He moved to Paris and still lives there today.
Maalouf writes in French, and his works have been translated into many languages. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his book "Rock of Tanios".
He uses his experiences of civil war and migration in writing his novels. The characters in his novels are wanderers. They may not have just one home country, language, or religions.
Bulb
A bulb is the part of some plants, mostly under the dirt, that stores food while the plant is resting from growing (a "storage organ").
Some well-known bulbs people grow to use as food are onions and garlic. Some bulbs grown for the decorative flowers are the lily, tulip, and some irises.
Some plant storage organs that are similar to bulbs, but have different names are, tubers, corms (swollen stems), tuberous roots, and pseudobulbs.
1520s
Wave
A wave is a kind of oscillation (disturbance) that travels through space and matter. Wave motions transfer energy from one place to another.
Waves play an important role in our daily life. This is because waves are a carrier of energy and information over large distances. Waves require some oscillating or vibrating source. Ocean surface waves were the first known waves. Later, other kinds were discovered.
There are two categories of waves.
Waves which require any medium for their propagation are called mechanical waves.
For example:
Water waves, sound waves, and waves produced on the string and spring.
Waves which do not require any medium for their propagation are called electromagnetic waves.
For example:
Gluon
Gluons are what hold quarks together to make bigger particles. Gluons carry the strong force between other quarks, so it is considered a force carrying particle. Photons do the same thing, but for the electromagnetic force. Also, like photons, gluons are spin-1 particles, and when a particle has spin-1 it is considered a boson.
Gluons are hard to study because although they exist in nature all the time, they are so small and require so much energy to break them away from quarks (about 2 trillion degrees) that scientists have only been able to find more about them from particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) (born 17 December 1778 in Penzance, Cornwall, England; died 29 May 1829 in Geneva City, Switzerland), was a Cornish chemist. His study of chemistry led to the first pure forms of some of the chemical elements such as water and sodium.
Myxobolus cerebralis
Myxobolus cerebralis is a small Myxozoan parasite that eats the insides of fish like salmon and trout, causing whirling disease.
This is a problem in fish farming and also in natural fish populations. In the last 100 years, it has spread to most of Europe (including Russia), the United States, South Africa, and other countries. In the 1980s, people found out that "M. cerebralis" needs to live in a worm before it can live in a fish. It infects both the fish and the worm by poking a hole in them and putting part of itself in.