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At its bare essentials, every atom is made of two fundamental particles: electrons and quarks. But not all quarks are the same. In fact,

Top quarks weigh in at an impressive 175.6 gigaelectron volts (GeV)about the same mass of the atomic nucleus of goldbut only exist for 15 to 24 seconds before decaying into free particles. Because of the top quarks (relatively) massive bulk, it took decades after the discovery of the bottom quark for the U.S.-based Fermilabs to create an accelerator capable of detecting the elusive particle.

In the 30 years since, investigating the top quark has opened up new worlds of particle physics, and the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 revealed the two particles close association. Now, scientists at CERN have been busy investigating the top quarks quantum properties, and discovered that top quarks experience quantum entanglement like other elementary particles even in spite of their mass.

In the fall of 2023, the Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) Experiment discovered entanglement between two top quarks, and earlier this week, another CERN detectorthe Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)also detected quantum entanglement between top quarks, according to CERN. Specifically, the team discovered entanglement between the unstable top quark and its antimatter partner across distances farther than what can be covered by information transferred at the speed of light, according to a press release. In the famous words of Albert Einstein, that is what's known as spooky action at distance.

To help illustrate this strange effect of quantum mechanics, Regina Demina from the University of Rochesterwho was part of the original team that discovered the top quark in 1995, co-lead a team that built the tracking device for finding the Higgs boson, and now led the CMS team at the Large Hadron Collider at CERNdescribes the idea in colorful terms via a Facebook video:

This kind of entanglement has been a hot topic when it comes to exploring quantum information and quantum computers, but top quarks can only be made in colliders. So, while they wont be used in these types of next-gen machines, the discovery of their entanglement could answer questions about this the nature of this spooky action from a distancequestions like whether that entanglement continues once a particle decays, and what eventually breaks that entanglement.

Its been a long journey of discovery when it comes to the top quark, and there are likely many more mysteries yet to uncover.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

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Yes, the Most Massive Particle Shows Some 'Spooky Action At a Distance' - Popular Mechanics