In the study of mechanics, action at a distance is one of three fundamental actions on matter that cause motion. The other two are direct impact (elastic or inelastic collisions) and actions in a continuous … 展开

The concept of action at a distance acts in multiple roles in physics and it can co-exist with other models according to the needs of each physical problem.
One role is as a summary of physical … 展开

Early inquiries into motion
Action-at-a-distance as a physical concept requires identifying objects, distances, and their motion. In antiquity, ideas about the natural world were not organized in these terms. Objects in motion were modeled as living beings. Around … 展开

In the early decades of the 20th century Karl Schwarzschild, Hugo Tetrode, and Adriaan Fokker independently developed non-instantaneous models for action at a distance consistent with special relativity. In 1949 John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman built … 展开

Albert Einstein wrote to Max Born about issues in quantum mechanics in 1947 and used a phrase translated as "spooky action at a distance", and in 1964, John Stewart Bell proved that quantum mechanics predicted stronger statistical correlations in the … 展开

Quantum field theory does not need action at a distance. At the most fundamental level only four forces are needed and each is described as resulting from the exchange of specific bosons. Two are short range: the strong interaction mediated by mesons and … 展开

• Central force – Mechanical force towards or away from a point
• Principle of locality – Physical principle that only immediate surroundings can influence an object
• Quantum nonlocality – Deviations from local … 展开