Throw Out Those Math Books

Quantum mechanics is weird stuff. I don't claim to understand it. (Someone--Richard Feynman maybe?--said that if you think that you understand quantum mechanics, then you don't understand quantum mechanics.)

Anyway, as described by news@nature.com:

Researchers have shown that removing a photon from a laser beam can lead to it containing more photons than it had before. This result, along with a few other mathematical tricks, is the first practical demonstration of one of the basic principles of quantum physics — the quantum non-commutative effect — and it is leading the way towards controlling light at the quantum level, and to quantum cryptography.

The result of adding, then removing, a photon was different from doing the opposite. Nature is very weird at small scales--something that pseudo-scientists, con-men, and New Age-types try to take advantage of. They love to use the word "quantum."

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