Switching Cause and Effect in the Quantum World

Switching Cause and Effect in the Quantum World

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One of the most deeply rooted concepts in science and in our everyday life is causality; the idea that events in the present are caused by events in the past and, in turn, act as causes for what happens in the future. If an event A is a cause of an effect B, then B cannot be a cause of A. Now theoretical physicists have shown that in quantum mechanics it is possible to conceive situations in which a single event can be both, a cause and an effect of another one.

The findings will be published in Nature Communications. Although it is still not known if such situations can be actually found in nature, the sheer possibility that they could exist may have far-reaching implications for the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum gravity and quantum computing.