# Physicists: new book "Spooky Action at a Distance" - deeper level of the Universe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 11, 2015, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281 "2015-11-11T12:43:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281/21 "2015-11-12T00:25:23Z")
Eh, I believe in nonlocality, but only of a very subtle sort. And even gross nonlocality isn’t inconsistent with special relativity; it just forces one to challenge yet other “common-sense” notions like absolute causality. It’s sort of like defective bubble wrap: You squeeze out one bubble, but that just causes another one to pop back up, and squeeze both of them at once, and a third pops up instead. But yes, I would love to see an experiment that could distinguish between the two. Sadly, though, I don’t think there’s even one proposed that could tell, and I don’t know if such an experiment is even in principle possible. Though then again, I’m sure many thought the same about the experiments implied by Bell’s inequality, so maybe there’s hope. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281/22 "2015-11-12T01:18:02Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > IANAP, but I think there is something in our universe that serves as the foundation for everything we see, experience, measure, etc. And this “something” is right in front of our eyes. We can see it, but we can’t comprehend it due to our limited intelligence. And it’s likely we _never will_ be able to comprehend it. – Obi-Wan Ianap 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281/23 "2015-11-12T01:54:40Z")
Is this amplitudhedron related to the old E8 lie group, the basis of the Exceptionally Simple theory of everything? > **[An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything)** > > "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" is a physics preprint proposing a basis for a unified field theory, often referred to as "E8 Theory", which attempts to describe all known fundamental interactions in physics and to stand as a possible theory of everything. The paper was posted to the physics arXiv by Antony Garrett Lisi on November 6, 2007, and was not submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The title is a pun on the algebra used, the Lie algebra of the largest "si The theo... ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281/24 "2015-11-12T06:42:33Z")
> [@Enola\_Straight](#): > > Is this amplitudhedron related to the old E8 lie group, the basis of the Exceptionally Simple theory of everything? > [An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything) No. The amplituhedron is a geometric object that can be used to more easily calculate certain things (like particle scattering amplitudes) in certain kinds of quantum theories (quantum field theories featuring supersymmetry). ‘E8 theory’ is a particular quantum field theory, one who possesses a certain kind of symmetry under E8 transformations—so it’s basically just a theory ‘of the same kind’ as those we use at present (the Standard Model is a quantum field theory with a different symmetry group, for instance), while the amplituhedron is (at the moment) a calculational device that can be used to compute things in model theories that we know don’t describe the real world. (Although it’s hoped that it can be generalized to something more fundamental.) ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281/25 "2015-11-12T23:07:06Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > By the way, today was a bit of a minor ‘dawning of a new age’ if you’re interested in quantum foundations—two papers came out on the arXiv, the physics pre-print server, conclusively demonstrating the impossibility of ‘local realism’—that is, the attitude that all of the properties of a physical system should be objectively fixed at all times, in conjunction with the idea that there are no faster-than-light influences. > > The important thing those experiments did was to close two experimental loopholes, by which the correlations could, in some rather abstruse models, be made to look like they are in conflict with local realism, even though the underlying physics obeys it, simultaneously. Now, this has first been achieved back in August already, but the statistics of that experiment were rather weak; the two new experiments feature far more impressive data, reducing all wiggle room to (virtually) zero. > > Unfortunately, this is often presented as a claim that ‘nature is non-local’; but that’s too quick. This only follows if one holds to the fact that all properties of a system are well defined at all times; it’s only upon joining this condition with locality that one gets a contradiction with the experiments. Hence, nature is only non-local if it is the case that all properties have precise and definite values at all times (which we just can’t get at experimentally, as in the case of simultaneous position and momentum measurement). > > In particular, it’s strictly speaking wrong to say that quantum mechanics is nonlocal: since it doesn’t include definite values for all observables, it evades the constraint without a necessity for nonlocal interactions. But still, people—even professional researchers—do it all the time, which causes no end of confusion. I think this article here: [http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/will-quantum-mechanics-swallow-relativity](http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/will-quantum-mechanics-swallow-relativity) …speaks to this. I am only part-way into it, but it discusses those findings of non-locality and some experiments at the forefront of thinking about how to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-new-book-spooky-action-at-a-distance-deeper-level-of-the-universe/737281.md?page=1)