There is no shortage of weirdness in quantum mechanics, and the phenomenon known as entanglement is weird with a capital “W.”  When two particles are entangled, they share a connection no matter how far the distance between them.

Measuring one particle can tell you what measuring the other particle will provide. For decades experiments have been focused on finding what controls these measurements. Now a proposed test suggests the control could be separate from the material world—from human consciousness.

“[French philosopher Rene] Descartes put forth this mind-matter duality, [where] the mind is outside of regular physics and intervenes on the physical world,” says Lucien Hardy in a New Scientist article.

“[If] you only saw a violation of quantum theory when you had systems that might be regarded as conscious, humans or other animals, that would certainly be exciting,” says Hardy, who holds research and lecture positions at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. ”I can’t imagine a more striking experimental result in physics than that. We’d want to debate as to what that meant.”

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