Everything you’ve heard about quantum entanglement is wrong

Chris Ferrie
4 min readAug 24, 2022
Entanglement as interpreted by the MidJourney AI.

Quantum entanglement. What the hell is it? Perhaps you’ve read that,

Quantum entanglement is a bizarre, counterintuitive phenomenon that explains how two subatomic particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space. Despite their vast separation, a change induced in one will affect the other.

Not true. Maybe you’ve read that,

When two or more particles link up in a certain way, no matter how far apart they are in space, their states remain linked.

Nope. Even Wikipedia is wrong, stating:

Quantum entanglement is the physical phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance.

The official YouTube account of Fermilab, which is hosted by an award-winning physicist and celebrated science communicator, states that quantum information can travel faster than light, which is certainly false.

The Royal Institution recently hosted one of my favourite and most lucid communicators of theoretical physics who said…

--

--

Chris Ferrie
Chris Ferrie

Written by Chris Ferrie

Quantum theorist by day, father by night. Occasionally moonlighting as a author. csferrie.com

Responses (30)