Let's say you take two conducting plates, each one meter square or so, and put them in deep, deep space. Far enough away that nothing external should influence them, and they're sitting in the near-vacuum of interstellar space. Just to make things easier, we'll say this part of space lacks even the one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter density of space, and is actually a perfect vacuum. Now, you make one place negatively charged, and the other positive. What do they do? Well, they attract due to electromagnetic forces. Obviously. So let's take away the charge. What do they do? Well, they attract due to electromagnetic forces. Wait, what?

Oh what a tangled state we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
(With apologies to Sir Walter Scott)

Quantum Entanglement. Spooky action at a distance. Quantum teleportation. Instantaneous transfer of information. Oh, man, does the science media love to talk about this. As does everyone who read a few articles and starts thinking of the wild possibilities. But quantum mechanics is a very, very tricky subject, which may be why I've held off on talking about it until now. No doubt someone will find something wrong with what I say, because I don't have any sort of advanced degree in the subject, and hoo boy is it complicated. Today, though. we're just going to talk about entanglement, one of the fun aspects of quantum mechanics that doesn't really mean what most people think, in its simplest form (because it gets complex fast)...

Many of you have probably heard of the thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat. The basic premise of it is that you have a cat in a box. Also inside that box are a flask of poison gas, a radioactive element, and a detector hooked up to a small hammer to smash the flask. Now, if the radioactive element, well, radiates, the detector will detect it, smash the flask, and the poison will kill the cat. It is important to note that this experiment has never been performed, and actually performing it may get you labeled as a psychopath (or just someone who really, really hates cats). While the box is sealed, there is no way for an observed to know if the cat is alive or dead—that is, if the radioactive element has triggered the detector. The goal behind this experiment is the idea that, at some point during this experiment, the cat is both alive and dead—that is, a superposition of those states. Erwin Schrödinger himself came up with this scenario to demonstrate...