it takes two to entangle
aka Winduos
TL, DR; entangled photons
“In entanglement, one constituent cannot be fully described without considering the other.”
Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where two photons can be made to be intimately connected to each other*. The state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the other, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. The pair is one (to the point where if you change the characteristics of photon A, photon B changes, even if it’s a million light-years away)…
The top two photos were taken nearly a 100 years and 1000s of mile apart. Both capture moments of candid serendipity. The one on the left, from The Window, the one on the right, Cartier-Bresson’s famous “Behind the Gare” photo — both with a ‘decisive moment’ jump, water rings, a linear element passing edge-to-edge behind the subject, and a horizontal ladder (one wood, one a crosswalk). Connected across space and time (which, according to Einstein, are one and the same… so for the rest of the photos below, the entanglement involves time).
For each pair of the below photos, the singular images were taken months apart; in the pairing, each individual image is fully described by considering its other:
Einstien, FWIW, hated quantum entanglement. He saw it as impossible because it violated the speed limit of information (186,000 mi/sec, “C”, the speed of light) and local realism, where an object is only affected by its immediate surroundings. He referred to the instantaneous phenomenon as “spooky action at a distance". Some scientists have suggested that time is an emergent phenomenon . That is, time places all clocks, or any objects usable as clocks, into the same history.
Photos are a clock.
“Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated experimentally with photons, electrons, and even small diamonds" says Wiki. To which I’ll add: people.
One day, early in the morning, a beam of sunlight shone precisely through a sliver of space created by a post and the edge of a building. It was an urban Stonehenge — the sun had had to align perfectly with the narrow gaps between a phalanx of numerous tall buildings, down to four inches at sidewalk level, to create that line. (In many years of living and working at The Window’s location, I only witnessed this once.) So the entanglement: late one night, after some shenanigans on the street, a police vehicle shone, at 90 degrees, a beam of light right along that exact line. (I’m guessing looking for a discarded gun). A decisive moment split across two images, missed if either event had been seen a second later. Two photos, intimately connected to each other:
NOTES:
-*Photon pairs are created by trapping light in carefully sculptured nanoscale microcavities; as light circulates there, photons resonate then split into entangled pairs. Photo pairs are created by standing carefully forfuckingforever at a nonnanoscale window + watching for microdetails as people circulate below + taking many images across (many + more + months)² + curating ones that resonate together into entangled twos.
- OMG, someone using the word quantum again. Dear reader, rest assured; my eyes roll in entanglement with yours.
-The younger-couple-arguing-photo is a callback to the (now-improved) post “13 Ways of Looking Out the Window”, specifically the line in the final poem where “she tears out his hair with such gusto” (or maybe more like yanked with enthusiastic force, which BTW occurs just after the above photo). As for the follies of the older couple, all follicles remained embedded during this particular dispute of theirs, but perhaps, noting the un-hirsute head of the gentleman, not so much in previous ones. (Of course, if these photos are “entangled”, then the yanks in the one photo spookily caused the acreages of skin on the man’s scalp in the other pic).
-Bonus Winduo Photo below, each fully described by considering the other, but in a different way — pinch up to see the tiny word on the side of the garbage truck twinned with the large graphic on the delivery truck. (Another theme of The Window is the passage of time, and these images about sum that up):
“The Crosswalk”, one massing of themed images from The Window:
K.I.A.: www.nu4ya.com (kabuki jet engines, recombinant installations, CRISPR paintings, snow collages, and more of those kinda things)