Update: We added more information about how quantum entanglement actually works.
Sure, vows and rings are nice symbolic ways to express your dedication to someone. But what if you could show your bond more deeply — like, at the atomic level? A Las Vegas hotel is now offering a unique service that lets you and your partner become quantum entangled.
Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon that occurs when two or more particles interact and then behave exactly the same way — even if they're molecules, miles, or a universe apart. What happens to one happens to the other. Jonathon Keats, the experimental philosopher behind the project, found the idea of quantum entanglement extremely romantic, so he sought a way to make it happen for couples tying the knot. "What more could you want in a relationship than what those particles share?" Keats told Fast Company.
As part of the Life Is Beautiful festival, Keats set up shop in Las Vegas' Art Motel with a lab-grown, nonlinear crystal hung in a sun-filled window. Light passes through the crystal, bouncing and refracting as mirror images and prisms. The happily wedded couple walks through the light's tangled photons, and hopefully, finds some quantum entanglement inside themselves afterwards. Keats and his own wife have undergone this unconventional ceremonial experience.
Keats says it's entirely possible that those walking through the light could end up with entangled particles inside them following this encounter; unfortunately, there's no way to prove it — attempting to measure entanglement is one of those paradoxes of quantum physics.*
The idea and purpose behind this new nuptial ritual is certainly powerful, though. Now, you're not just bonded on paper; you're (potentially) connected at the atomic level. You couldn't dream up a more scientifically romantic wedding tradition if it came out of the LHC.
*That's actually not quite how quantum entanglement works. A laser is needed to split photons into single pairs of entangled photons. More details here.
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