Data collected at the NOvA far detector in northern Minnesota shows one of the first interactions captured at that detector from a beam of man-made neutrinos. The neutrino beam is generated at Fermilab in Illinois and then sent through 500 miles of earth to the far detector. Image courtesy of NOvA collaboration.
In a landmark study, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment that 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. The Delft study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, lends further credence to an idea that Einstein famously rejected. He said quantum theory necessitated “spooky action at a distance,” and he refused to accept the notion that the universe could behave in such a strange and apparently random fashion.