Comment on: Testing the speed of 'spooky action at a distance'

TL;DR

This paper critiques a recent Bell experiment claiming to set bounds on the speed of spooky action, arguing that alternative explanations with slower or no communication are possible upon analyzing the experimental procedure.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis showing that the experimental results do not necessarily imply superluminal spooky action, highlighting alternative explanations.

Findings

Alternative explanations with subluminal communication are possible.

The experimental procedure allows for explanations without spooky action.

The claimed bounds on the speed of spooky action are not definitive.

Abstract

In a recent experiment, Salart et al. addressed the important issues of the speed of hypothetical communication and of reference frames in Bell-type experiments. The authors report that they "performed a Bell experiment using entangled photons" and conclude from their experimental results that "to maintain an explanation based on spooky action at a distance we would have to assume that the spooky action propagates at speeds even greater than the bounds obtained in our experiment", exceeding the speed of light by orders of magnitude. Here we show that, analyzing the experimental procedure, explanations with subluminal or even no communication at all exist for the experiment.