Readers amazed by Amasia
Your comments on the January 21, 2017 issue of Science News
Saved by the Bell
Physicists used light from stars to perform a cosmic Bell test, which verified that quantum particles were indeed “spooky,” Emily Conover reported in “Quantum effect passes space test” (SN: 1/21/17, p. 12).
Reader George Mitchell took issue with Conover’s description of entangled photons before they are measured as having multiple polarizations at once. “We don’t know the direction of their polarization,” Mitchell wrote. “It is undefined.”
“Multiple polarizations” in this context is meant to indicate that there are multiple possible outcomes of a polarization measurement; the particle does not have a definite polarization that is simply unknown. “Bell tests like the one in the article confirm this interpretation,” Conover says (SN Online: 1/27/16).