I just saw a comment that linked to an article explaining how Nobel prize winners recently discovered the universe is not locally real. My brain isn’t functioning properly today, so can someone please help me understand what this means?
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Locality is the principle that information and interactions cannot happen faster than the speed of light. If you turn on a flashlight, a distant observer cannot know about it before the photons from your flashlight reach their eyes.
Reality, in this context, means that phenomena can have properties independent of interaction. A red apple is always a red apple, even if its color is never measured by anyone or anything.
The 2022 Nobel Physics Prize winners showed that both of these principles cannot be true at the same time. You have to give up one or the other. Either some systems can communicate faster-than-light, or some properties are undetermined until they are measured. This on its own is nothing new; it has been theorized since the 1960s when quantum mechanics as a field of study was being developed. This prize was awarded for an experimental setup that is believed to have finally closed all possible “loopholes”, meaning that there is no alternative explanation that allows for local reality to be preserved.
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