- Messier 34 (also known as M34, NGC 1039, or the Spiral Cluster) is a large and relatively near open cluster in Perseus. It was probably discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and included by Charles Messier in his catalog of comet-like objects in 1764. Messier described it as, “A cluster of small stars a little below the parallel of ? (Andromedae). In an ordinary telescope of 3 feet one can distinguish the stars.”
- CERN scientists find evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep (home.cern)
Quantum entanglement is a fascinating phenomenon where two particles’ states are tied to each other, no matter how far apart the particles are. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for groundbreaking experiments involving entangled photons. These experiments confirmed the predictions for the manifestation of entanglement that had been made by the late CERN theorist John Bell. This phenomenon has so far been observed in a wide variety of systems, such as in top quarks at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2024. Entanglement has also found several important societal applications, such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing. Now, it also explains the famous herd mentality of sheep.