John Bell Day Lecture 2021: 'Spooky Action at a Distance'

Telepathy would be a powerful way to communicate among people, but it is not allowed by the laws of Physics. The transfer of information requires always some time; this was particularly true in the past, when messages and letters took months to reach people on the other side of the world via a ship. It is true also today in our fully interconnected world, where information travels at the speed of light, which is very large but finite. The underlying physical principle is called locality: changes, forces, information… anything cannot jump instantly from a place to another, rather it must propagate through space at a finite speed, limited by the speed of light. We will present why Quantum Mechanics challenges this principle, and how J.S. Bell contributed to uncovering one of the most fundamental problems in the foundations of quantum theory. Watch Professor Bassi's lecture now

About the Speaker

Born in Udine (Italy) in 1973. Angelo Bassi was awarded the degree in Physics (Summa cum laude) at the University of Trieste in 1998 and the Ph.D. in Physics in 2001. Subsequently he was Post Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Scientist at the ICTP in Trieste (2002/04) and Marie-Curie Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximillian-University in Munich (2004/06). In December 2006 he became staff member of the Department of Physics of the University of Trieste, where now he is associate professor.

He published 70+ articles in international Journals. He is referee for the APS and IOP journals, and for the American NSF. He is co-organizer of 17 international conferences, workshops, schools on Quantum Mechanics and related topics. He was invited speaker at 40+ international conferences and schools. He was Chair of the COST Action “Fundamental Problems in Quantum Physics”, and currently is Chair of the COST Action “Quantum Technologies in Space”.