BISHOP USSHER 1, EINSTEIN 0:

Eighty years after the physicist dismissed as "spooky" the idea that simply observing one particle could instantly change another far-away object, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday they had proved decisively that the effect was real.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers detailed an experiment showing how two electrons at separate locations 1.3km apart on the Delft University of Technology campus demonstrated a clear, invisible and instantaneous connection.

Importantly, the new study closed loopholes in earlier tests that had left some doubt as to whether the eerie connection predicted by quantum theory was real or not.

Einstein famously insisted in a 1935 scientific paper that what he called "spooky action at a distance" had to be wrong and there must be undiscovered properties of particles to explain such counter-intuitive behaviour. 

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