Quantum entangled wedding vows

You just knew that I *had* to share this. A conceptual artist is offering to bind people into wedded bliss by entangling their "fleshy" wave functions.

Here's the scoop from Discovery Magazine:

"A scenario might go like this, said Keats in an email correspondence with Discovery News about his project:

In the simplest case, involving only two people, the couple begins by walking down a long hallway from darkness into sunlight. (The hallway is wide enough for them to walk side by side, but too narrow to accommodate more than two people at a time.) At the end of the hallway, the couple will find two sets of footprints, on which they'll stand facing one another, nearly touching. (Depending on their preference, they may be dressed or naked.) They'll look up and see a window bright with sunlight, and suspended in that window above their heads they'll find the entanglement apparatus, which has been precisely calibrated (using a system of adjustable prisms) to divide the sunlight passing through a nonlinear crystal (made of beta-barium borate) so that half of the light shines on each person's face. They'll stand for approximately a minute, allowing countless entangled photons to bombard their skin, gently entangling their flesh by the photoelectric effect. Then they'll turn away and walk back down the hall and out into the open.

According to Keats, the couple won't know to what extent they've become entangled, because any attempt to measure a quantum system disturbs it."

Read the full article here.

Okay. So this is a little odd, but poetically speaking it's sort of sweet don't you think? I mean, a key part of the wedding services that I've done includes binding the hands of the couple in the celebrants stole as part of the blessing. (I was gratified to see the Archbishop of Canterbury use that symbol when he witnessed the vows that the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge made at their recent wedding.)

A sacrament is an outward symbol of an inward grace. What the particulars of the outward symbol are can be up to interpretation... I've seen all sorts of different wedding rings, different forms of vows, etc as part of the sacramental rite of Marriage in the Episcopal Church.

So why not add a moment of quantum entanglement?

Is it that much different than a Unity Candle, or golden lassos?

I wonder if I could get this apparatus installed at the Cathedral in time for the weddings next month? Hmmm.

Comments

[David]

You beat me to it, Nick! I was going to blog about this and suggest it was more your usual bag in doing so, but you saw it anyway. Must be something in the proton flow... or something! :s