THE ORIGINAL VERSION of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.
Nearly a century ago, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger called attention to a quirk of the quantum world that has fascinated and vexed researchers ever since. When quantum particles such as atoms interact, they shed their individual identities in favor of a collective state that’s greater, and weirder, than the sum of its parts. This phenomenon is called entanglement.
Researchers have a firm understanding of how entanglement works in idealized systems containing just a few particles. But the real world is more complicated. In large arrays of atoms, like the ones that make up the stuff we see and touch, the laws of quantum physics compete with the laws of thermodynamics and things get messy.
At very low temperatures, entanglement can spread over long distances, enveloping many atoms and giving rise to strange phenomena such as superconductivity. Crank up the heat, though, and atoms jitter about, disrupting the fragile links that bind entangled particles.
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