Word: photons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...photon puzzle was nothing more than a matter of speculation until 1964, when an Irish theoretical physicist named John Stewart Bell restated the problem as a simple mathematical proposition. A young physicist named John Clauser came upon Bell's theorem and realized that it opened the door to testing the two-photon problem in an experiment. Like Einstein, Clauser was bothered by the seemingly absurd implications of quantum mechanics. Says Clauser, now a research physicist at the University of California, Berkeley: "I had an opportunity to devise a test and see whether nature would choose quantum mechanics or reality...
...outcome was clear: a change in one photon did alter the polarization of the other. In other words, nature chose quantum mechanics, showing that the two related photons could not be considered separate objects, but rather remained connected in some mysterious way. This experiment, argues physicist Henry Stapp of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, imposes new limits on what can be established about the nature of matter by proving that experiments can be influenced by events elsewhere in the universe...