Quantum Nonlocality:
Scientists have demonstrated that a universal standard for measuring and quantifying non-local quantum correlations is not possible.
- While classical physics assumes locality, the principle of nonlocality is a feature of many interpretations of quantum mechanics.
- Nonlocality describes the apparent ability of objects to instantaneously know about each other’s state, even when separated by large distances (potentially even billions of light years), almost as if the universe at large instantaneously arranges its particles in anticipation of future events.
- Thus, in the quantum world, despite what Einsteinhad established about the speed of light being the maximum speed for anything in the universe, instantaneous action or transfer of information does appear to be possible.
- This is in direct contravention of the “principle of locality” (or what Einstein called the “principle of local action”), the idea that distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another, and that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings, an idea on which almost all of physics is predicated.
- Nonlocality occurs due to the phenomenon of entanglement, whereby particles that interact with each other become permanently correlated, or dependent on each other’s states and properties, to the extent that they effectively lose their individuality and, in many ways, behave as a single entity.
Nonlocality suggests that the “separate” parts of the universeare actually potentially connected in an intimate and immediate way.
