Nobel physics prize goes to sleuths of 'spooky' quantum science

Winners opened the way to powerful new quantum technologies; findings enabled work on quantum computers, encryption

Scientists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments in quantum mechanics that laid the groundwork for rapidly-developing new applications in computing and cryptography.

“Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said of the laureates — Aspect, who is French, Clauser, an American, and Zeilinger, an Austrian.

The scientists all conducted experiments into quantum entanglement, where two particles are linked regardless of the space between them, a field that unsettled Albert Einstein himself, who once referred to it in a letter as