Spooky Action at a Distance: Why Space and Times Are Doomed—and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything

Spooky Action at a Distance explores nonlocality—a phenomenon in which two particles can act in harmony regardless of distance, operating outside the confines of space and time. Einstein famously struggled with this concept, calling it "spooky action at a distance." In recent decades, physicists have uncovered additional forms of nonlocality with direct connections to black holes, particle collisions, and gravity. George Musser investigates whether space is what we have long believed it to be, tracing the contentious debates over nonlocality through twentieth-century discoveries. He follows experimental physicists observing particles acting in tandem, astronomers studying statistically identical galaxies, and cosmologists working to resolve paradoxes surrounding the big bang. The book shows how scientists, faced with the same experimental evidence, develop different explanations that challenge our understanding of space, time, and the origins of the universe, potentially pointing toward a new grand unified theory of physics. The book was long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.