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Nobel Prize in Physics won for quantum entanglement findings:

Physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this week for performing breakthrough quantum entanglement experiments.

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which a group of particles share a quantum state even when they are physically separate over some distance. Measuring the momentum, spin, or polarization of one particle instantaneously affects and determines the state of other entangled particles in the same system.

The nature of entanglement was fiercely debated among physicists. Some thought information could not travel faster than the light and there must be some other process impacting the particles in the system while others believed the weird phenomena showed a breakdown in classical physics, paving the way for quantum mechanics.

[...] In 1964, John Stewart Bell came up with a theoretical framework that tests if the entanglement effects were due to some hidden variables affecting the entangled particles. Bell's inequalities describe the mathematical constraints an entangled system must obey if it is affected by these local hidden variables.

[...] Clauser, 79, and Aspect, 75, performed the initial experiments proving that entangled particles violated Bell's inequalities in separate projects conducted in the US and France. Zeilinger, 77, later applied the results in other experiments demonstrating other entanglement-related effects such as quantum teleportation of a qubit.

"It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technology is emerging," Anders Irbäck, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said on Tuesday. "We can see that the laureates' work with entangled states is of great importance, even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics."

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