Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.
This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.
Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.
Well the link you just posted says they got the prize “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. They didn’t get the prize for showing that “the universe is not locally real”. That’s just something the article makes up in the headline to draw readers in.
I mean I get it, it’s hard to make science exciting and you need a bit of flair but I feel sometimes it goes a bit too far and kinda gives people the wrong idea.
The magazine did not make up locality lol.
In theoretical physics, quantum nonlocality refers to the phenomenon by which the measurement statistics of a multipartite quantum system do not allow an interpretation with local realism.
They literally did prove, and was awarded for, showing that the universe is not locally real.
Edit. To be clearer, realism means
the assumption that measurement outcomes are well defined prior to and independent of the measurements.
The word “real” and “locality” is not the same. The “lol” is unnecessary btw, there’s no need to try to ridicule me.
The magazine is taking a very technical term like “realism”, which means something specific in physics literature, and uses it in a headline and even just makes it “real”. The word “real” and “realism” is not the same. This goes into philosophy and not so much science.
Most people will read that as if reality is an illusion or some other nonsense like that. You can’t get to “the universe is not real” from what is actually said in the contents of the article.
A Wikipedia quote is not an argument btw.
EDIT to address your edit: you’ve hit the crux of the issue. That definition is not what most people think when they hear the word “real”.
