Quantum theory says that stuff doesn’t exist when we’re not looking at it. But weirder-than-weird experiments are resurrecting a long-derided alternative.

By Anil Ananthaswamy

IN OCTOBER 1951, physicist David Bohm left the US for Brazil. Branded a communist sympathiser, he had been arrested for refusing to testify to the US Congress. Acquitted, he was still stripped of his Princeton professorship. His departure began an exile that would last until his death, as a naturalised British citizen, four decades later.