Action at a Distance

Full Title or Meme

Action at a Distance states that an object's motion can be affected by another object without being in physical contact with it; that is, the non-local interaction of objects that are separated in space.

Context

This concept has been argued since Aristotle's time or before. Even Issac Newton was disappointed that his definition of gravity depended on it. Intuitively it seems like action requires contact, but now we know that at the atomic level contact is just action at very short distances. The atoms in two separate bodies just repeal each other very strongly when the get very close to each other.