Hi everyone,
Here is an new article about 'spooky action at a distance' that Einstein was so skeptical about. Scientists have found more evidence of bodies interacting instantaneously at very great distances.
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/another-win-for-quantum-theory-over-einstein-1235075?pfrom=home-lateststories*********************
In a landmark study, scientists at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment they say proved one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory - that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other's behavior.
The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of standard physics known as "locality," which states that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings.
Einstein derided the idea that separate particles could be "entangled" so completely that measuring one particle would instantaneously influence the other, regardless of the distance separating them.
But since the 1970s, a series of precise experiments by physicists are increasingly erasing doubt - alternative explanations that are referred to as loopholes - that two previously entangled particles, even if separated by the width of the universe, could instantly communicate.
The new experiment, conducted by a group led by Ronald Hanson, a physicist at the Dutch university's Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, and joined by scientists from Spain and England, is the strongest evidence yet to support the most fundamental claims of the theory of quantum mechanics about the existence of an odd world formed by a fabric of subatomic particles, where matter does not take form until it is observed and time runs backward as well as forward.
"These tests have been done since the late '70s but always in the way that additional assumptions were needed," Hanson said. "Now we have confirmed that there is spooky action at distance."
The scientists say they have now ruled out all possible so-called hidden variables that would offer explanations of long-distance entanglement based on the laws of classical physics.
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For information.
Cheers.
Sriram
PS: I have deliberately posted this in the General section instead of the Science section because of the philosophical nature of the subject. No one goes to the Science section anyway! So...request you to please leave the thread here.
