The Mysteries of the Quantum World

As part of the World Year of Physics, the Physics Section of the University of Geneva is organising a series of lectures for the uninitiated.

Each of the lectures will begin with a demonstration in the auditorium of the detection of cosmic rays and, in collaboration with Professor E. Ellberger of the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, of how these signals from the farthest reaches of the Universe can be used to create 'cosmic music'.

The sixth lecture, entitled 'Einstein's objections to the quantum computer', tackles a mysterious subject, one which Einstein had numerous doubts about. The lecture will be given by Professor Alain Aspect of the Orsay Institute for Optics.

In 1935 Einstein discovered a mind-boggling property of quantum mechanics: entanglement, which conflicted with his realist and localised vision of the world. This led him into a heated debate with Niels Bohr. We now know that entangled 'twin photons', even when separated by distances of dozens of kilometres, have this extraordinary property as suggested by Einstein. Today, entanglement could be applied to the new field of quantum computing. Will this conceptual and technological breakthrough change our society in the same way as the first quantum revolution did?