If ya wanna understand how quantum entanglement works; how it has, through experimentation, become the dominant theory of the universe, then you may have to bite the bullet and accept that the space-time continuum model is no longer the ultimate definition of reality.

You what? I know, but this little gem helps, Einstein’s Quantum Riddle – now thankfully available on YouTube.

Quantum entanglement is increasingly coming to the fore to explain how the instantaneous ability of pairs of particles to simultaneously appear in two places at once, defines our reality. Additionally, this works very well on the holographic model of the universe, in which, from an infinitely far away sphere, our reality, crowned by a sceptre of quantum bits – qubits – is beamed straight to us from a screen-like plane on the very edges of our Cosmos.

We are utterly tangled up with the stars.

In this model, from a 4D reality (dare I say 5D reality?), our 2D reality is directly projected, becoming 3D (volume, depth and width). However, time – the fourth dimension – along with space, simply disappear, replaced by information or quanta. The concept of time and space are discarded in the new model. Interconnectedness on a grand scale does away with both. They become redundant concepts. There are no vast distances to travel in quantum mechanics, the whole acts as a single blisteringly efficient structure that ‘magically’ appears when prompted by sensors.

And there is no vacuum of space. We are one with the Cosmos. Something which hippies in the 60s and 70s counterculture, as this doc shows, embraced in texts such as The Tao of Physics (1975) and The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979) written by the new physics avant-garde, or The Fundamental Fysiks Group as they called themselves, and by everyone taking pyschadelic drugs and attending rock festivals.

A four year experiment led by leading physicist Anton Zeilinger, carried out in the Canaries, establishes beyond all reasonable doubt that the intangible nature of particles is real. To do this, light from eight billion years ago is captured from  a quasar light-source. This is to ensure that the choice of filter through which a pair of entangled  photons passes, remains genuinely random, and is not influenced in any way. The result, shows that particles are entangled, they are non-localised and they act at a distance.

Though they exist in reality as only a millionth of the width of a hair, and then, only as a probability – that is, they are a prediction of a particle’s existence on an infinite scale of probability; only becoming a particle when they are detected by our instruments. This means, we are utterly tangled up with the stars. As there is no space – or time – as Einstein had perceived it.

The universe is a mass of particles that act, as far as we know, as a single strand or a humangous fuzzy mass. Whatever happens at any one point in this mass of fuzzy wave strands also happens anywhere else, instantaneously, as Danish physicist Niels Bohr predicted in 1927.

What Einstein rejected as ‘spooky action at a distance’ – as he felt the space-time continuum offered a more reliable model for the universe – has now become the closest thing to an understanding of how the universe actually works – that science has.

Einstein‘s Quantum Riddle is not bad for a BBC programme, but how many will grasp what this truly means? Only those who have travelled to the ends of the universe and back, I joke, but I sort of don’t…

Einstein’s Quantum Riddle: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000db95 via @bbciplayer