We have all felt the influence of another person even when we are separated from them. A kind of transcendental cosmic union: a secret mechanism behind the synchronicity of our dreams, or the thoughts on the fly that later turn out to have been identical to those of the distant being (like a kind of telepathy).
Quantum physics explains these links with quantum entanglement, which in turn comes from a principle discovered more than 4 decades ago: quantum non-locality. It is the connection between subatomic particles that do not share the same space, but have been in contact at some point. It is what Einstein disparagingly called spooky action at a distance.
This basically breaks the rules of classical physics; That is why Einstein did not agree very much with the theory of quantum “entanglement” and non-locality. But doesn’t that strange connection with the other also break the established rules? How is it that we feel it so close, being so far away? This can perhaps be explained by non-locality and the possibility it offers us of thinking about an interconnected world beyond space-time.
In this vein, non-locality could even explain ties with people we do not physically know.
Falling in love with someone we don’t know and who is far away?
In a recent study, published in Science Daily, it was found that there was another form of non-locality in addition to those already known.
The new theory postulated the connection between particles that have never interacted with each other and that may not even know each other, but that share a kind of fundamental connection that researchers have explained through the metaphor of emotions and bonds in love.
It is something like the connection that we could feel as children with an imaginary friend, the platonic love of youth for a rock star or that infatuation with someone we do not know physically, but perhaps we know through letters or Facebook.
As happens in love or friendship, in quantum physics subatomic particles are capable of creating a bond beyond a shared space, and even beyond whether they have interacted or not.
Of course, this is something that cannot be empirically verified, nor can it be seen; just like our bonds with others, whose strength often transcends all distance and, although inexplicable and invisible, are completely real.
So far it seems obvious why the physicist Niels Bohr compared the language of atoms to poetry, saying:
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as poetry. The poet is not as concerned with describing events as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
However, there is something else. This subatomic connectivity can only be explained by reinventing time itself.
Subatomic love beyond time
The bond between subatomic particles may be timeless. This explains the connection between what we could call the “lover-particles” in the theory of non-locality.
According to the researchers of the aforementioned study, carried out at Chapman University, there is a certain “indeterminacy” created by time in the quantum world. The present is not only affected by the past, but also by the future. Particles in the quantum world link the future with the past in subtle and meaningful ways, transcending them in ways that make us think about the possibility of space travel or quantum teleportation.
Thus, these particles can link and influence each other beyond time, no matter what the future holds for them. The same thing that Louise does, the brilliant linguist in the film Arrival (2017), who decides to love in the present despite knowing the tragic consequences of said act in the future.
Would we dare, like the particles or like Louise, to do what we do for love if we knew what awaits us? Would we love, even if one universe stood between us and the other? Maybe yes. After all, love and the mechanics of subatomic particles seem to be the forces that shape the cosmos as a whole. Both are inexplicable and random, but inalienable.