spooky action at a distance
spooky action at a distance noun: synonym of quantum entanglement.
Noun
spooky action at a distance (uncountable)
- Synonym of quantum entanglement.
- 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
- 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
- Synonyms:
- quantum entanglement
Synonyms of spooky action at a distance
Origin of spooky action at a distance
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.
Questions about spooky action at a distance
- What does spooky action at a distance mean?
- Spooky action at a distance means synonym of quantum entanglement.
- What part of speech is spooky action at a distance?
- Spooky action at a distance is a noun.
Words near spooky action at a distance in the dictionary
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Adapted from Wiktionary: spooky action at a distance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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