DECRYPTION – The Frenchman is rewarded with the American John Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger, for fundamental work which opens the way to technological breakthroughs.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to a trio of scientists whose very basic research is now giving rise to groundbreaking technological advances, ranging from quantum computers to perfectly inviolable.
These three winners, the American John Clauser, 79, the Frenchman Alain Aspect, 75 and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger, 77, did not work together. But each on their own contributed to providing an answer to an initially almost philosophical controversy, on the deep nature of quantum mechanics.
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This debate opposed two giants of 20th century science, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. “It’s a debate that basically concerns the representation we have of the world”, summarized in 2020 Alain Aspect in an interview given to David Louapre, on the Amazing Science YouTube channel. Einstein, father of relativity, had a hard time accepting quantum mechanics…