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Action at a distance is the concept in physics that an object's motion can be affected by another object without the two being in physical contact; that is, it is the concept of the non-local interaction of objects that are separated in space. Coulomb's law and Newton's law of universal gravitation are based on action at a distance.
The Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory (also called the Wheeler–Feynman time-symmetric theory), named after its originators, the physicists Richard Feynman and John Archibald Wheeler, is a theory of electrodynamics based on a relativistic correct extension of action at a distance electron particles. The theory postulates no independent ...
Forces and Fields has eleven chapters. The first ten chapters consist of 5 or more sections. The eleventh, 2 sections. These chapters are titled The Logical Status of Theories, The Primitive Analogies, Mechanism in Greek Science, The Greek Inheritance, The Corpuscular Philosophy, The Theory of Gravitation, Action at a Distance, The Field Theories, The theory of Relativity, Modern Physics, and ...
A theory that includes the principle of locality is said to be a "local theory". This is an alternative to the concept of instantaneous, or "non-local" action at a distance. Locality evolved out of the field theories of classical physics.
The action is defined by an integral, and the classical equations of motion of a system can be derived by minimizing the value of that integral. The action principle provides deep insights into physics, and is an important concept in modern theoretical physics. Various action principles and related concepts are summarized below.
Einstein also developed general relativity, in which spacetime was treated as a field and its curvature was the origin of the gravitational interactions, putting an end to action at a distance. In quantum field theory, fields become the fundamental objects of study, and particles are excitations of these fields. To differentiate from quantum ...
Thus, quantum theory is local in the strict sense defined by special relativity and, as such, the term "quantum nonlocality" is sometimes considered a misnomer. [7] Still, it prompts many of the foundational discussions concerning quantum theory.
This requirement has been very influential in the past, in the first place as a result of direct observation of causal processes (like pushing a cart), in the second place as a problematic aspect of Newton's theory of gravitation (attraction of the earth by the sun by means of action at a distance) replacing mechanistic proposals like Descartes ...