Physicists use pulses of light in 37 dimensions to prove quantum paradox
A puzzle with only three moves may sound simple. In quantum physics, it can still break classical logic. That is the heart of a new experiment led by physicist Zhenghao Liu and colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark. Writing in Science Advances, the team built what they describe as a three-context Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, or GHZ-type, paradox. Then they reproduced its statistics in a 37-dimensional optical system. As a result, the outcome sharpened one of quantum theory’s strangest claims: what you can say about a system depends on how you choose to measure it. In ordinary life, measurement seems passive. You check a speed, a weight, a temperature, and assume the thing you measured already had that value. However, quantum mechanics does not let you keep that picture. The study focused on contextuality, the idea that even when a set of measurements is compatible, you still cannot assign fixed preexisting values without specifying the full measurement context. The GHZ paradox has long served as one of the cleanest ways to expose that tension. It sets up …
