First of all, it is surprising that not a single of these media or blog articles mentioned the names of the physicists who actually invented quantum interrogation or interaction-free measurements. So who are they? Their names are
and the discovery was made in 1991 although the paper only appeared in a proper journal in 1993. The first experiments occured eleven years ago, in 1995, with the names of Paul Kwiat as well as Anton Zeilinger on the paper. Zeilinger, who is a leading Austrian experimenter in the field of quantum teleportation and related topics, had done some very closely related experiments already in 1994. The originally low efficiency of the interaction-free measurements was improved in 1999 in a paper by Kwiat et al., including Zeilinger.
What are these discoveries all about? Let me start with...
Zeno's paradox
The ancient philosopher thought that an arrow cannot really move because you can divide its path into infinitely many pieces, and because the total length of each piece is zero, Zeno thought that their sum must also be zero, and an inconsistency of mathematics is then a trivial corollary. Zeno was apparently unaware of the fact that "0 times infinity" can give a finite result.
He had also invented other paradoxes that are not relevant for the main point of this article - for example, in his "Achilles and the turtle" paradox, he showed that he thought that the sum of an infinitely long sequence of positive numbers (such as the geometric series in his case) had to diverge. Although these Greeks started science - the Euclidean geometry may be viewed as the oldest field of physics describing relative positions of perfectly solid bodies - truth to be said, their ignorance was often breathtaking. ;-)
Quantum Zeno effect
Let us jump by several millenia into Zeno's future. Consider a two-level system in quantum mechanics. For example, take an excited atom that is ready to decay into its ground state. Normally it takes some time T but if you keep on measuring the energy of the atom very frequently, you prevent the atom from jumping onto another level. Much like Zeno thought, if you divide the time into infinitely many pieces - and you insert measurement to each point - motion becomes impossible.
Another example is a particle that is able to tunnel through a barrier. Such a thing can occur in quantum mechanics but only if you give the particle enough freedom to be invisible for a while and re-appear on the other side. If you watch the particle permanently, the tunneling can't take place. Because of the same reason, the economy can't operate well under a Big Brother who is permanently watching i.e. in socialism.
OK, we know what the quantum Zeno's effect is about.
Interaction-free measurements
The improvement from the 1990s is that you may also want to look at a different place from the location of the particle, and you can still learn something about this location. The classic example is a light-sensitive bomb. Can you see (optically) whether the bomb is in the box while avoiding detonation? The answer is Yes, Elitzur and Vaidman argued. Click at the word "bomb" in this paragraph (don't be afraid, it will probably not explode) and you will learn how can you sometimes become sure that a bomb is able to explode without actually exploding it.
Sean Carroll has recently become famous for replacing an exploding bomb by a barking dog and the igniting photon by salami.
See this paper for a description how the Elitzur+Vaidman paper was written and why is the adjective "interaction-free" misleading (and dependent upon your interpretation of quantum mechanics) for these experiments. Lev Vaidman is by the way also one of the key players behind quantum teleportation. In 1999, the methods were improved by dividing the interference to many pieces, i.e. by using the quantum Zeno's effect mentioned above. See Kwiat's page for details.
At any rate, the ideas of Elitzur and Vaidman are primary, the infinitesimal "quantum Zeno" improvements in 1999 are an interesting addition to the original discovery, the experiments are rather straightforward, and the recent connections with quantum computing probably have more marketing than physics in it, especially because the concepts of "counterfactual computation" have also been known at least for 5 years.
A Christian graduate student could also use the same mechanism to experimentally reconstruct the events in which God initiated Jesus Christ without ever touching Mary. ;-)
If someone is convinced that the "counterfactual computation" can circumvent some problems in quantum computing and either reduce the error rate or decoherence, the most obvious way to use this insight is to build a working & large enough quantum computer. That would be really cool.
Similarity with Afshar
Incidentally, there is some remote similarity of these experiments with Afshar's experiment. Afshar also uses "negative information from scattering" because if you remember, he places the grid at the interference minima. His photons then interact with the grid much less than they would interact if the grid were placed at generic places (this is the counterpart of the bomb not exploding most of the time - or the dog not barking). Afshar then incorrectly interprets this setup as a 100% measurement of the wave properties by each photon, and he continues by saying that he can also measure 100% of the "which way" information - which verbally contradicts the complementarity principle.
I have argued that most photons in his setup cannot be argued to have measured the wave properties of light because they failed to interact and paint any interference pattern.
