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Letter: It boggles both ways

Published 11 July 1998

From Anton Zeilinger, University of Innsbruck

Max Wallis suggests that quantum mechanics has become, in my own words, so
“mind-boggling” and “absurd” as to be far-fetched
(Letters, 23 May, p 56).

While this might be correct, his claim that all modern optical experiments
can be understood by interpreting light as waves in the presence of background
vacuum oscillations is another case of naive realism. In fact, the very vacuum
oscillations Wallis proposes have the same mind-boggling entanglement features I
refer to and which are so clearly seen in experiments involving two or more
photons.

Austria

Issue no. 2142 published 11 July 1998

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