We’re trying to see if that 'blink and you miss it' moment when a quantum particle settles down actually takes a split second to happen.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Test of the essential collapse-locality loophole
arXiv · 2603.24909
The Takeaway
If quantum states don't change instantly, it would solve a century-old paradox where particles seem to communicate across distances faster than the speed of light. Proving a time delay exists would mean the universe obeys a strict cosmic speed limit even at the smallest scales, fundamentally grounding quantum 'weirdness' in classical physics.
From the abstract
Collapse-locality is an untested loophole in the violation of Bell's inequalities. The core of the argument is that the time value of photon detection is delayed by the time Tc required by the collapse of its quantum state. The value of Tc is given by the underlying theory of quantum collapse, and is mostly unknown. Depending on the value of Tc, detections in the performed Bell's experiments may have not been truly space-like separated events. This implies that the inequalities may have been vio