Why Do I Think of Someone Just Before They Text Me?
Einstein thought quantum entanglement is a mere ‘spooky action at a distance,’—but test after test shows that it is very much real!
Imagine you are lying in bed late at night, staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, you think of someone whom you have not spoken to for maybe a few months. Then, within a few minutes or even seconds, your phone starts to buzz. You have received a message from the one you were just thinking of: “Hey, I know it’s late, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
It’s the kind of moment that makes you pause. Was it just a coincidence? Or is there something deeper at play?
Science would typically dismiss this as selective memory—you remember the rare moments that feel extraordinary while forgetting the countless times you thought of someone and they didn’t text. But what if this eerie connection had roots in quantum physics?
This is where quantum entanglement, one of the strangest and most counterintuitive phenomena in physics, comes into the picture. It challenges everything we know about reality.
At the core of modern physics is a fundamental rule: nothing can travel faster than light. Yet, quantum mechanics suggests that entangled particles influence each other instantly, no matter how far apart they are.
This directly contradicts Einstein’s theory of relativity, which insists that information can’t move instantaneously across space. If nothing is sent between the particles, how do they “know” what’s happening to each other?
To understand this, we need to go back to the early 20th century. Two of the greatest minds in physics, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, were locked in a debate about the fundamental nature of reality.
In 1935, Albert Einstein, along with physicists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, proposed the EPR Paradox (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox). They argued that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because it suggested something impossible:
- Quantum mechanics predicts entanglement. It is essentially where two particles remain connected. No matter how far apart they are.
- If you change one, the other reacts instantly. But how?
- This seemed to break Einstein’s theory of relativity, which states that nothing—including information—can travel faster than light.
Einstein famously called this “spooky action at a distance.” He believed quantum physics was missing something—perhaps a hidden variable that would explain the weirdness in a logical way.
Niels Bohr, however, embraced the weirdness. He argued that at the quantum level, reality is fundamentally different from what we expect. Particles don’t have definite states until they are observed. However, the act of measuring one particle really can instantaneously affect another, no matter the distance.
For decades, this was just a theoretical debate. At least until scientists actually tested it.
Einstein Proved Wrong!
In 1964, physicist John Bell proposed a way to test whether Einstein or Bohr was right. Bell formulated Bell’s Theorem, a mathematical test to determine whether quantum mechanics was truly as weird as Bohr claimed or if Einstein’s hidden variables were at work.
Bell’s inequality showed that if hidden variables existed, certain statistical correlations between entangled particles would never exceed a specific limit.
But if Bohr was right, and quantum mechanics was complete, experiments should show violations of Bell’s inequality. This could prove that entanglement is real.
Physicists now had a blueprint to test Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”
The first major breakthrough came in 1981-1982. Alain Aspect, a French physicist and an alumni of ENS Cachan and Université d’Orsayand, together with his team in France conducted the first definitive test of Bell’s theorem.
- Aspect’s experiment involved entangled photons separated by over 12 meters, measuring their properties in real time.
- The results violated Bell’s inequality, confirming entanglement and eliminating the possibility of hidden variables.
- The experiment proved that instantaneous action at a distance was real. Something Einstein believed as impossible.
Over the following decades, more experiments solidified this. In 1997, Austrian quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger and his team of researchers at the University of Innsbruck achieved the first successful quantum teleportation—using entanglement to transmit a quantum state from one particle to another without physically transferring information.
By 2017, a group of physicists at the University of Delft in the Netherlands closed all major loopholes in quantum entanglement tests, proving with nearly 100% certainty that no hidden classical explanations exist.
If all this sounds too abstract, here’s a simple way to think about it:
🔹 Imagine two magical dice. No matter how far apart they are—whether on opposite sides of the Earth or different galaxies—if you roll one and it lands on a six, the other will also land on a six.
🔹 It’s not because they are sending a signal to each other faster than light. It’s because they were somehow linked from the very beginning.
🔹 Entanglement isn’t about communication—it’s about a hidden connection embedded in the fabric of reality.
But could something similar be happening with human thoughts and emotions?
The Quantum Mind: Are Our Thoughts Entangled?
The idea isn’t entirely new. Some scientists speculate that the human brain might exhibit quantum behaviors.
- Quantum Cognition Hypothesis (2000s- Present) – Some researchers suggest that human decision-making follows quantum probability patterns rather than classical logic.
- Brain Wave Synchronization (2017 Study, University of Cambridge) – Studies have shown that when two people are emotionally close, their brain waves tend to sync up, even when physically apart.
- The Global Consciousness Project (1998- Present, Princeton University) – This experiment suggests that large-scale emotional events (like 9/11) may influence random number generators, hinting at some unknown connection between minds.
While no one has proven human entanglement, these findings suggest that human consciousness might exhibit quantum-like properties.
Entanglement isn’t just a bizarre quirk of nature—it has practical applications.
In 2016, China launched the Mozi Quantum Satellite. Their installation is proof that entangled particles are useful for secure, instant communication across 1,200 kilometers.
In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their contributions to quantum entanglement experiments.
By 2030, scientists predict we may have a quantum internet, enabling unhackable communications using entanglement.
Could quantum-like principles play a role in human connections? Could your brain somehow “know” when a loved one is about to reach out?
While scientists haven’t proven human thought entanglement, some researchers speculate that consciousness might follow quantum-like principles. The brain operates on electrical impulses and quantum-scale interactions—meaning the idea of entangled minds isn’t entirely outside the realm of physics.
Just as two entangled photons instantly “sense” each other’s state, could deep emotional bonds act in a similar way, influencing thoughts or subconscious behaviors across vast distances?
