spooky action at a distance en · NOUN
Etymology
Calque of German spukhafte Fernwirkung. Coined by Albert Einstein in a letter to Max Born on March 3, 1947 to express his skepticism about quantum mechanics, where two particles may interact instantaneously over a distance.
Meanings
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(uncountable) Synonym of quantum entanglement.
Once one is lead down this path, it is inevitable to conclude that spooky action at a distance occurs in nature. On the other hand, if one eschews the ontological interpretation of the wave function, then “action at a distance” is, at best, descriptive of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. One must be extremely wary of extending such inferences to physical reality itself.
2022 April 16, Stephen Boughn, “There Is No Spooky Action at a Distance in Quantum Mechanics”, in Entropy, volume 24, number 4, →DOI, page 560-6:Of course, such a correlation is in principle possible to explain without any spooky action-at-a-distance: simply assume that the “particle” really is a particle, with a definite location at all times, and about half the time the particle goes to the right and half the time it goes to the left.
2011, Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity: Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Physics, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 240:The correlations are thus due either to entanglement, as predicted by quantum physics, or to some hypothetical spooky action at a distance whose speed we wish to bound from below.
2008 August 14, Daniel Salart, Augustin Baas, Cyril Branciard, Nicolas Gisin, Hugo Zbinden, “Testing the speed of ‘spooky action at a distance’”, in Nature, volume 454, number 7206, →DOI, page 863:
Synonyms
Translations (7)
de spukhafte Fernwirkung (quantum entanglement) · it azione spettrale a distanza (quantum entanglement) · es acción fantasmal a distancia (quantum entanglement) · pt ação fantasmagórica à distância (quantum entanglement) · fr action fantôme à distance (quantum entanglement) · pl upiorne działanie na odległość (quantum entanglement) · ca acció fantasmal a distància (quantum entanglement)