Entangled quantum systems, such as two electrons with opposite spins moving away from each other or two polarized photons, will always be correlated, no matter how remote they are (as long as they don’t interact with anything else in the interim). As soon as the spin of one electron is measured, the spin of the other is determined instantaneously, even though it may be a light-year away. It’s weird, but true. The physicist Roger Penrose, the anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, and others have speculated that this otherworldly nonlocality is closely linked to consciousness. Strands of Buddhism, a
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