Quantum Theory and the Special Theory of Relativity

Abstract

One of the main unresolved problems in the foundations of physics is the compatibility of quantum theory with the theory of relativity: although the latter seemingly excludes the propagation of information with velocities faster than the speed of light c in the vacuum, the nonlocality of quantum theory (as given by the EPR correlations, for example) is — at least in the opinion of the big majority of physicists, which I share in this regard — an experimentally confirmed fact [Aspect, Tittel et al.]. This apparently proves that there exist “quasi-instantaneous effects” over very large distances such that the latter could be viewed as propagating with “practically infinite velocity.”¹

It may well be that a relativistic version of the (quantum) theory, while Lorentz invariant and local at the observational level, may be necessarily non-local and with a preferred frame (or aether) at the fundamental level.