“I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice. “But a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!”
It’s an experience eminent physicist Yakir Aharonov can relate to. Together with fellow Israeli physicist Daniel Rohrlich, he’s shown theoretically how a particle might show its face in a corner of an experiment without needing its body anywhere in sight.
To be more precise, their analysis argues information could be transferred between two points without an exchange of particles. The theory dates back to 2013 when researchers based in the US and Saudi Arabia suggested a kind of freezing effect applied to a quantum wave still might not be enough to stop it from transmitting information.
“We found it extremely interesting – the possibility of communication without anything passing between the two people who communicate with each other,” Aharonov explained to Anna Demming at Phys.org. “And we wanted to see if we can understand it better.”