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Space and Time Might Be an Illusion | NOVA | PBS

NOVA PBS Official | September 8, 2026



A cosmic experiment tests the fabric of the universe.
This video was originally produced in 2019.

Physicists have long debated the reality of “spooky action at a distance,” otherwise known as quantum entanglement.

Albert Einstein believed that physical properties, like position or momentum, were definitive and did not change whether anyone observed them or not. But Niels Bohr believed that quantum systems existed in superposition and properties only became definite when measured.

Now, a team of researchers conduct a cosmic Bell test using light from quasars billions of light-years away. By using ancient light to control their experiment, they aim to close a major loophole and show if reality is as strange as quantum mechanics suggests.

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Written by NOVA PBS Official

Comments

This post currently has 25 comments.

  1. @Temptit

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    Time yes it's fake and your concept is flawed, space not so much.

    T=∆e time and change in energy are equal meaning time is simply a change in energy. Everything is energy stored in different forms with different decay rates, and it all moves in one direction meaning time travel backwards is impossible.

  2. @Faux.News.Inc.

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    Its always baffled me that they claim particles are tied at a distance…. even extreme distance… then they claim to not know exactly where both particles are and what they are doing at the same time. Somehow magically they happened to always capture entangled particles in their clouds even though you cannot know which particles are entangled. Lots of particle clouds… always get entangled particles? Convenient. Lets not forget that measuring either destroys both. Can't actually look at it or you destroy it.

    God works via faith too. People pray for rain. Eventually it rains. God is great.

    How does the light from the distant galaxy "decide" your filter. How do you not know that there is no inherent issue with that "randomizer" too? What makes you assume the light form a galaxy is random? The photons have to have commingled at the point of impact. Is there no wave interference unless a human is looking for it? Guess that only happens in the lab.

  3. @dontveter3372

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    When God created the heavens and the Earth, He created a block universe. All the correlations were built in at that time. But no one wants to accept the block universe, they just want to believe in presentism.

  4. @3zdayz

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    The perfectly fine for security… Just because they are they can be correlated and that they don't actually update remotely doesn't matter they still match at both ends… And meaning can be assigned.

  5. @OthoapProto

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    I get the idea they used a source billion of miles away to randomized the test. However then they go on to say at 8:06 "Anywhere in the universe" so that's far from definitive and "hardly any room left". Don't count out Albert yet?

  6. @blackbeastantoine

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    I really don't like religious propaganda. If science needs "strange particles", Dark matter with a quantum vinaigrette, it has become a religion. 2B christians are incapable or finding a single proof of jesus life, over 1700 years. How will science prove any of the quantum BS within a hundred years. The scaffolding is failing! Turn to plasma physics and cut the nonsense!

  7. @AI-mg3hy

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    I'm not sure that these scientists are as curious and skeptical as they claim to be if they are willing to believe that an external actor could be influencing their random choices in the laboratory but the same sort of external actor could not have set the star's behavior billions of years before the experiment. By changing their experiment they suppose there is something determining a part of the experiment that is supposed to be random, but they don't ever say what that something is. Then if it the same experiment can be repeated with stars light years apart then it somehow proves there is no external something? That makes zero scientific sense. More like dancing around something science doesn't want to acknowledge.

  8. @efx245precor3

    September 8, 2026 at 12:21 pm

    It’s not spooky because the charges on the two particles are set before they are separated. Then if you look at your local one and it’s positive then you know the other is negative and vice versa. There’s no action happening at a distance at alll.

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