Pulling Entangled Photons Out of a Hat

… or perhaps not.

Entanglement Is Not That Magic

That said, though, it’s fairly common to hear claims of the form “when two particles are entangled, anything you do to one of them changes the state of the other.” This is not strictly true, though, and it’s worth going through in detail, if only so I have something to point to the next time somebody starts using that line. This will necessarily involve some math, but I’ll try to keep it as simple as I can.

Still Better Than Shipwreck Cove on the Island of Shipwreck

A Random Walk through Oddly Named Physics Things

In spite (or perhaps because) of the overwhelming boringness of much technical jargon, scientists are drawn to whimsical or poetic names more than you might suspect. Here are some of my favorites.

In a 1969 paper entitled “Mixmaster Universe,” physicist Charles Misner set out his idea for a solution to the paradox. Although it sounds like a 1980′s proto-hip-hop group, the theory actually gets its name from a kitchen appliance, the Sunbeam Mixmaster.

The idea was that the early universe went through a phase of so-called chaotic evolution, which did for the cosmos what the Mixmaster does for cake batter, mixing its contents until they were smooth and even.