  In this paper I shall demonstrate that an analysis of the concept of
"efficiency loophole" leads to the conclusion that any type of charge carried
by and elementary particle must be distributed on the surface of a
non-spherical object. As a result I shall show that; for example, the
eletrostatic field of an electron as seen by an observer, must be in the form
of quantized superluminal pulses. Therefore, "efficiency loophole" cannot be
used in support of local realistic models. In view of the available
experimental results we conclude that a local realistic interpretation of
quantum mechanics has now been empirically refuted. However, it can be shown
that the inferred superluminal signals do not necessarily contradict the facts
of Lorentz transormations and only introduce a weak non-locality into the laws
of nature. For this reason we make a preliminary investigation about a possible
connection between quantum mechanics and non-spherical charge distributions. We
conclude that this idea deserves to be further investigated and its validity or
otherwise can be verified experimentally.
