You can do quite a lot with particles of light—quanta. They always appear as “twins” and can be magically altered in such a way that one particle always knows exactly what the other is doing at any given moment. Even when they’re very far apart. Researchers at Fraunhofer IOF are using this phenomenon of entanglement to build a secure data network. In the future, this could be used to transmit sensitive data with a high level of security. In medicine, samples are examined under microscopes. However, the microscope’s light can alter or damage the samples. With the help of quantum particles, researchers at Fraunhofer IOF can create images of the samples out of thin air, without the samples ever coming into direct contact with light.
