Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
So when Carroll talks about 'physicists not understanding QM', he's just unhappy that most physicists don't share his view about QM and he's been known for trying to shame physicists for not sharing his view too. [3][3.1]
[1] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-...
[1.1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxgGYJ3OjM8
[2] https://motls.blogspot.com/2014/07/many-worlds-pseudoscience...
[3] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most...
Then please write about these probes, and not just the rant that "nobody understands."
The public doesn't have to worry (and we don't have to read) about the "interpretations" until there is a specific proposition of how to do such probe an the experiment can be constructed and performed.
He writes "students who demonstrate an interest in the topic are gently but firmly — maybe not so gently — steered away, sometimes with an admonishment to “Shut up and calculate!”."
My answer to this article would be, to theoretical physicists: "shut up and construct an experiment that can be performed." As long as there's no practical difference (in the sense that any experiment that can be imagined can demonstrate it) there's just no physics there.
So yes... "shut up and calculate."
If Hawking Radiation can never be observed till the heat death of the universe, is that pseudoscience, or just really hard to test?
At this regime, all of physics is very hard to design an experiment for on ranges we have access to.
The characterization is a little bit harsh, but yes. The Copenhagen interpretation is non-falsifiable, (relative to MWI) so while I don't know what it is, I know it isn't science.
There's a reason most reputable scientific journals don't accept papers dealing with interpretations of quantum mechanics. There's no "there" there.
Hawking radiation is interesting because a proof of lack of Hawking radiation is a proof of the falsehood of quantum mechanics. Which is really interesting; any time you can falsify something like quantum mechanics every physicist should be paying attention. Also, if certain models of string theory are correct, particle accelerators like the LHC should be able to produce micro black holes, which will then evaporate in detectable ways. So Hawking radiation is of observational interest as of 2010 as a possible way to provide evidence to support string theory. (spoiler alert: we didn't find any)
Or why is mwi impossible to verify.
[1] There is this one theory whose name I cannot remember, where each particle in the universe gets their wavefunction multiplied by a delta function or very thin gaussian at random intervals, and whose sudden localization also causes a sort of chain reaction and localizes all particles it is entangled with. This theory is interesting because it helps set a (statistical) limit between microscopic and macroscopic interactions; basically, when you go past a certain number of entangled particles, everything will be well-localized virtually all of the time, but for small numbers of particles we'll see quantum phenomena. Unfortunately I recall this theory having too many holes, and perhaps it has already been falsified, but the point is that at least it made an effort to address inherent problems in QM (namely, wavefunction collapse) in a way that physicists actually should; by making testable claims.
That's a pretty big "if". As I suspect you know, how much Hawking radiation a black hole generates is inversely proportional to its size (it's probably an inverse square function to be precise, I forget).
A consequence of that is that supermassive black holes, the kind at the center of galaxies that we are most likely be able to indirectly (or even directly) observe, will generate almost none and whatever is generated will likely be outshone many orders of magnitude by the accretion disk anyway.
But... small black holes should shine extremely brightly, albeit briefly. A black hole resulting from a supernova will take a stupendous amount of time to lose enough mass (from Hawking radiation) to get this small and the window of time is so small we're unlikely to ever directly observe this.
But if we can ever figure out a way to lase gamma rays we can construct so-called Kugelblitz black holes (that some call the ultimate battery or even the ultimate computer).
Granted there's no theorized let alone practical way of lasing gamma rays, which is a problem.
But nevertheless, the theory of Hawking radiation makes testable predictions so yes, it's unlike Many Worlds (or even, honestly, string theory).
We might decide a theory isn't testable even on principle, or discover that a theory we thought that wasn't testable actually is testable, but we'll never know until we do the work.
---
Consider the famous Schroedinger's Cat.
The decayed particle has two states: decayed and not decayed.
The cat has two states: dead and alive.
The researcher that opens the box has two states: sad and happy.
The waveform does not collaprse. The particle, the cat, and the researcher each have a uncollapsed waveform; i.e. are in both states.
However, these waveforms are not independent; they are entangled. The decayed particle is coincident with the dead cat and the unhappy researcher. And the undecayed particle with the alive cat and the happy researcher.
All states "exist" simultaneously, but not independently. This bifurcation in the wave function magnitudes is a "split" in the universe: every future waveform interaction will be in the context of decayed particle/dead cat/unhappy researcher and undecayed particle/alive cat/happy researcher.
"Many worlds" sounds nonsensical, but it is really just a colloquial expression for waveform entanglement.
---
Now this does present a philosophical question on how consciousness functions in light of the split waveforms.
I maintain that science -- quantum mechanics or otherwise -- has no explanation or even language to express "consciousness". It's like asking science an ethics question. And this inability applies to all science, not just quantum mechanics.
MWI distinguishes itself by omitting (as you say) any notion of "collapse" from its axioms. This is appealing for simplicity but the problem is how it connects to experimental results:
1. How does the Born rule arise? If the universe split into two but the measure of cat-dead is 1/pi, why do I find myself in the cat-alive universe more often?
2. More generally, how does randomness arise? MWI contains only deterministic axioms, so how can it explain the experimental observation that measurements of similarly prepared states result in different values?
> 1. How does the Born rule arise?
> 2. More generally, how does randomness arise?
As you said, with Many Worlds there is no randomness. The multiverse is entirely deterministic. Randomness is a Copenhagen-like concept.
There is a "universe" with an alive cat and a "universe" with a dead cat. These universes have a certain waveform distribution.
Neither of these universe are any more real or extant than the other (they have the same magnitude).*
* Though consciousness and its observations seems to follow only one path. This is a peculiarity outside the realm of physics.
So the “realm of physics” is now disconnected from empirical reality? Great.
Unfortunately, yes. Empirical reality is limited by the empiricist.
Of course physics can answer this: the human minds on the different branches can't physically interact. They can't share memories. Each one is going to remember experiencing only its own branch.
Whether this is a problem or not depends on what your conception of consciousness/identity is. I see a conflict or unanswered problem there; you may not.
Wondering why you're a specific one of them and not the other seems equivalent to me to wondering why you're you and not some another person in our own world. I think it's an interesting question, but I'm not sure what an answer to it could possibly look like (since any answer that says why you're you somehow needs to work out differently for other people to explain why they're themselves too) which implies the question is malformed somehow. (If your consciousness were ... someone else, or even switched people it was tracking somehow, it's not like anyone would notice.)
Indeed.
It’s as if non-determinists aren’t sure that 2 doesn’t act like a 3 sometimes because of decoherence and so 2 + 3 = 6 as a result.
Where am I going wrong in this line of thinking? How could randomness be injected into a system without superpositioning of quarks? Is that literally the only way?
Is Hawking radiation the smoking gun we think it is?
Edit: I admit I am tired when posting but this topic is perhaps one of the most fascinating of all. I can’t stay away.
It's like matrix multiplication: yes you can wind up with more elements after the operation, but the result as a whole is entirely deterministic.
If you defined matrix multiple multiplication where you collapsed the result down to a single unspecified vector, then you would have "randomness" (according to the selection).
Many worlds says "don't choose"; keep the entire matrix, and the results will get larger and larger.
The universe is not fundamentally rolling dice, though it appears that way from your perspective since you can only see a single slice of the matrix.
MWI's solution to this is to say the experiments are wrong, and the results are actually the same. It rejects empiricism to simplify the theory. But that's not good science.
> Neither of these universe are any more real or extant than the other (they have the same magnitude)
What is meant by "magnitude?" It can't be the measure of the wavefunction because those can easily be different, e.g. if the particle's decay probability is not 50%. This is the Born rule problem again.
Imagine instead of a single experimenter observing a billion possible outcomes, a billion experimenters observing a single possible outcome.
My guess would be that they are all consciously experienced, some more and some less. The alternative seems to be to say that they are so called "p-zombies". Very similiar to us, evolving according to the same laws, but not concious. But it's really up in the air.
The hope of MWI is to produce a simpler theory by eliminating an axiom. If this forces us to axiomatize "conscious observers" then it has already failed. Though I admit it may be fun to think about.
Carroll does not mention his preference for many-worlds in the article because that's not what it's about. The fact that he has a preferred interpretation is not relevant to the point that physicists should pay closer attention to the lack of consensus on the interpretation of qm.
I don't see that in this particular article (which is not to say it isn't there in other articles Carroll has written). In this article, he is simply pointing out that QM is the only physical theory we have ever had that does not have a single generally accepted interpretation. Not believing the MWI is fine (I'm not a fan of it myself), but that just means you have to find some other interpretation that works, and nobody has done that; every interpretation of QM has issues that nobody has figured out how to resolve.
Or, the universe was split before and that quantum uncertainty is really us perceiving those already-existing other universes. The collapsed wave is really just us measuring the only particle, the one in our universe, capable of stronger interactions. Under that interpretation the rest of the electron shell is a cloud of other electrons existing across universes but unable to interact strongly in ours, literal ghost particles.
This is testable, if not practical atm. If something like an electron exists in ghost forms across multiple universes then they may be linked in those other universes more strongly than ours, a concept that may offer explanations for a variety of quantum behaviors. Proof of this would be the observation of a reliable link between particles not linked in our universe.
If someone does it and doesn't die would you think that did prove anything?
If one thousand people do it and one of them is still alive after 10 coin flips does that prove anything?
What is the detectable physical difference? How do you carry on an experiment to detect that physical difference? What is the protocol to determine that the physical difference has been detected?
Please let me know how should we do to not totally ignore this.
So if you are still alive in 1M years that’s evidence of QI. Basic Bayesian reasoning.
You can always just be lucky; maybe gravity causes the Earth to move randomly and we've just been lucky to see if orbiting the sun for the past few years.
This is incorrect and bad faith representation of Carrol's position.
While Carrol is proponent of MWI, he is calling more research on foundations of quantum theory in general. If you follow his podcast it's clear what his position is. Some of these so called interpretations are "legitimately distinct physical theories, with potentially new experimental consequences". In this article he specially mentions Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%...
This is quite a popular claim among the Physics community. It goes even further saying: those who understand it don't understand it. ;-) Emphasizing how counter-intuitive the concepts are and also the fact the even Standard QM (with 1 or 2 particles) is still a research topic. Even Einstein didn't believe in QM as it stands now.
Our understanding of quantum measurements is much better now than it was at the advent of quantum mechanics, and it's understood that there's no such thing as an "abrupt" collapse of a wave function during measurement, it's instead a continous process involving entanglement and decoherence between two quantum systems (the system being measured and the measurement system). This understanding allows us to explain any measurement process using only "plain" quantum mechanics, i.e. unitary evolution of two coupled systems described by a Hamiltonian. If we just look at the Hamiltonian of the measured system it will seem that it shows wave function collapse because its evolution is non-unitary, but the evolution of the entire system is still unitary. From this angle I personally find any further invokation of a wave-function collapse mechanism unnecessary, and I think it overcomplicates quantum mechanics without giving us any benefits, so we might as well do away with it. Unfortunately, most courses on quantum mechanics still introduce the students to wave-function collapse when explaining measurement outcomes, which might be the reason that so many physicists have a bad understanding of the measurement process. Of course wave-function collapse is still a good shortctut for describing strong quantum measurements, I think it should be introduced as an approximation of a continuous measurement though.
> A lot of physicists also don't see any value in MW's interpretation since it offers no predictive value
is not entirely correct either.
This is the probably best "explain like I am an undergraduate not in Physics" article on Everett's proposal.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-everett/
To further summarize the value of Everett's proposal:
In the standard von Neumann-Dirac collapse formulation of QM, a collapse happens when we measure it. But what a measurement event looks like and conditions when it occurs are not described by the theory at all. This is one reason why QM cannot completely describe the universe, or approximate it. Note that even if we can describe what a collapse is, this+QM still fails to model parts of the world, only approximating it.
But one can try to propose a formulation of QM that agrees with the collapse formulation, that does not have that collapse, so that it is closed in the sense that for each system of observers observing a quantum system collapsing, that system can be modeled as quantum system itself. That is Everett's proposal. From the linked article,
> Everett’s solution to the problem was to drop the collapse postulate from the standard formulation of quantum mechanics then deduce the empirical predictions of the standard collapse theory as the subjective experiences of observers who were themselves modeled as physical systems in the theory. The result was his relative-state interpretation of pure wave mechanics.
In MWI there is no collapse event, because there are no observers in the traditional sense that may collapse the system. In MWI we resign and just say that observers are subject to QM, and when a "measurement" is made, what happens is that observers and the observed system get entangled so that certain combinations of properties of the observer-observed system are not possible. This entanglement of two projections of a composite system can be described in the language of QM.
> what is predicted by standard QM, because the MWI is supposed to recover the same predictions.
MWI recovers the same predictions. Where in standard QM if one says an observer observes that a system may collapse 40% in state a and 60% in state b, MWI says that in systems (of the observer and the observed) where the observer makes the observation in the same exact manner, the observer will record state a with the system in state a 40% and the observer will record state b with the system in state b 60%, and there are no states where the observer observes something and the subsystem is in the other state.
Of course, you can simply model the entire system of observer and observed in standard QM and recover the same relative predictions without invoking the absolute observation of an observer. In MWI we do away with the conceit that there is an absolute observation of an absolute, but ill-defined observer.
If standard QM has no problem to make predictions then I agree than in principle the MWI could make the same predictions (but it seems to me that in practice it can only make predictions by using standard QM and saying that those are the same predictions that could in principle be derived).
Edit: it's too late to alter my original ancestor comment, but I think the way I wrote it may have yielded a misunderstanding. I didn't mean to suggest that MWI has value because it can predict phenomena. I meant to say that it has value because it is a metaphysically cleaner model of reality than the collapse interpretations.
David Deutsch (in many ways, the father of quantum computing) initially imagined quantum computing as a way to test MWI: if a problem could be solved that required more gates than there are particles in the universe, then it would (so the argument goes) prove that the problem was being solved in the multiverse.
The universe is constantly splitting. Not just when there is decoherence.
Or more accurately. Every possible state of the universe has a probability amplitude right now. And those probability amplitudes are constantly evolving, diffusing into each other, interfereing with each other.
Every such state with a probability amplitude is a world of the many worlds.
Where does the energy come from to create the other universes?
To give a specific example, let's say you have a classical system with only three particles in the entire universe, and further let's say they are interacting via a conservative force. So, how many things are there in the universe? Is each particle communicating with the others to organize their movements? Then, there would be three things in the universe. Is there a potential field permeating all of space, into which the particles project their influence? That would be four things. Is there a "strand of force" connecting each particle to every other particle? Then, there would be six things.
The debates in the paragraph above were alive and well in Newton's time. However they were philosophical debates, not physical debates, because the three suggestions I proposed (along with the other possibilities I didn't mention) are all mathematically equivalent and would lead to the same motion.
The fact that we assume that the rules yesterday are the same as the rules today is one of those axioms that we simply have to accept in order to make progress.
I don't think that was the OP's idea. He doesn't even reference Newtonian mechanics in the article.
Biologists don't fully understand the human brain or aging.
Chemists don't fully understand superconductors.
Astrophysicists don't fully understand black holes.
Computer scientists don't fully understand P vs. NP.
You say "nobody cares", but people do care, and if they care in one context, why shouldn't they care in another?
Forces at a distance vs fields? Not so much.
This entire comment is arguing against an opinion I believe nobody even stated. But why would we waste time trying to discover the metaphysics of an ultimately incorrect description of physical reality?
If we think our models are right, we will push them until we find out where they are wrong. That's what we do, over and over again. Pushing classical physics to its breaking point spawned quantum mechanics. We know there's a breaking point for present day physics too.
Models in Physics involve experimentation, validation, interpretability
With mathematics, we can describe hypotheses of reality, but there may be details and nuances to reality which we're simply not able to observe and thus not able to empirically consider.
I said “description.” You’re adding additional constraints that may or may not be warranted.
All existing attempts to describe physics have encountered some sort of incompleteness. Newtonian physics yields ordinary differential equations, which can encode Turing-complete problems. [0][1] Quantum mechanics yields Hamiltonian operators, which can encode Turing-complete problems too. [2][3] Both of these paradigms predate Turing's work; physics was Turing-complete a long time before you came along to look at the problem.
I can empathize with your original point: Surely reality exists! It seems so real! But reality can be real without existing. Ultimately, our models are only hypotheses about reality, and what they have shown us here is that even our models are so complex as to admit problems that are not going to be solved by mere assertion of existence.
[0] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11494645_21
[1] https://sapientia.ualg.pt/bitstream/10400.1/1008/1/05-GCB-st...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16059
[3] https://eprints.ucm.es/38062/1/spectral-gap_supplementary.pd...
That’s a bald assertion, not an answer. And one can certainly imagine descriptions of physics that don’t require a formal system.
Here’s one: “every particle remains at rest for all t.” Now, that doesn’t describe our universe very well. But it might be a perfectly good description of a single-electron universe.
There’s no a priori reason to assume that a valid description of physics is axiomatizable in a formal system. Aruguments to the contrary are necessarily based on our own ignorance, not on anything fundamental.
Interesting definition of “while”. Even relative to human civilization (which itself is a drop in the bucket) we haven’t been searching all that long.
Still, chasing understanding is useful as every now and then something jumps out of the rabbit hole and changes things... Trying to understand the revolutions of the celestial spheres, why black bodies don't emit endless amounts of energy or what it would be like to travel at the speed of light.
This article seems to take a confused definition of "understand". Not admitting to a full and complete understanding is rather different from knowing nothing at all.
And to give your typical smartphone user some credit, most of them probably have some idea of the concepts of radio waves and computers, even if they don't grasp the details.
I think because at its core it is a probabilistic (or perhaps there are many worlds, but the implications are identical) theory--there is some inherent uncertainty in the predictions. This uncertainty builds up over time if left unmeasured, due to the chaotic nature of the system. We won't be able to result this uncertainty until we have more precise and accurate measurement devices.
I was thinking, the only real way for us to progress was to get the results out of CERN we were expecting--either smaller particles or some detection method which allows us to peer even deeper into the atom.
I think certain physicists are tired of the search for a unifying theory since it probably won't help us make better predictions. We need to get out there and get new empircal data.
> We need to get out there and get new empircal data.
To do this it's necessary to formulate the right questions first, as gathered data (which are in effect, answers) provide no information alone.
Edit: "provide no information alone" is a bit too strong. What I'm trying to say is more precise questions tend to produce more precise answers in normal discourse, I'm generalising that.
Yes, the equations do seem to predict what we observe in experiments very well. Shockingly well, given how strange some of the predictions made by them are! However, we lack an intuitive understanding of why the equations work. Matter and energy behave very differently on the quantum scale than they do on the macroscopic scales we're used to observing. If you're trying to model a pendulum, your intuition about how objects behave in the real world can be of immense help when performing sanity checks on your equations. Your intuition is worse than useless when it comes to quantum systems. It's not just flat-out wrong much of the time, it can lead you to ignore things that should not be ignored.
Quantum physics has all sorts of English language, short-hand descriptions for mathematical functions like "tunnelling", "non-local", "spooky action at a distance" or, as is pertinent to this article "observation". You may think you understand what these mean, but you're probably at least partly wrong if you're thinking about them in terms of human language, natural human intuition, or even the very specific short-hand terminology of physicists. We are continually teasing out nuances in the math that language simply does not capture. If we lack the language to adequately describe reality, can we really understand it?
Feynman was very correct to observe that people who think they understand quantum physics on a deep, intuitive level, probably do not. Doing quantum physics with a human brain evolved for bashing stones together is like trying to breathe in outer space. It's possible with considerable effort and the right tools (e.g. a space-suit), but if you ever forget that it's a deeply unnatural thing to be doing you're probably going to get yourself into trouble.
Logic may have something to say about open or closed systems, but mapping that onto the real world will always be a following question.
It is only the broad hypothesis that is only answerable in philosophy: "There is a point in physics where no further progress can be made in understanding why things work the way they do and we will be purely limited to describing how things work." (i.e. there is some lowest level of physics)
Falsification is not end end-all-be-all, it's important, but it's not the only thing that matters.
This is relevant as it is sort of ambiguous as to which hypothesis jshaqaw was asking about.
You don't have to understand the mathematical explanation for why this is so (one does exist) in order to have an intuition that serves you well in practically all situations. For most of us, there is no deeper understanding. It just is, and that's good enough. That doesn't necessarily mean there is no deeper understanding, but let's ignore that for now.
What I was trying to get across is that basic intuitions we have about the macroscopic world that we can see and touch are often flat-out wrong on the quantum scale. Likewise, human language has developed to describe macroscopic phenomena and struggles to capture the meaning of quantum phenomena. Intuition and language are crucial parts of understanding, but we find ourselves on treacherous ground when we try to apply human language or intuition to quantum systems. The confidence that comes with intuition and mastery of language are wholly counter-productive in quantum physics. You need to constantly reexamine what you think you know in the light of both new discoveries and the math. Both are sources of continual surprise.
Hence, if you think you understand quantum physics, you probably haven't given it enough thought.
Those of us who aren't deaf and blind begin to make audio-visual models of our macro world in childhood. We can agree with confidence that "that's a rock" (if not its physical properties). Even in our macro world, our models have limits. (What do radio waves 'look like' as they're emitted by different antennas? Go around buildings? We draw pictures.)
But we're nearly deaf and blind to the quantum world. We have collections of indirect observations and math. Our models of it are necessarily limited by our inability to experience it directly. Those with math 'intuition' are in a better position ... but still.
They are a convenient notion for defining path integrals.
Intuition and understanding are two different things. Our intuition behind quantum mechanics is obviously wrong--quantum mechanics doesn't even obey regular logic! Quantum logic gets rid of a rule, for example.
So it's probably impossible to develop an intuitive understanding if that is your criteria.
As we've progressed, we slowly just get used to new abstractions. The concept of zero, negative numbers, complex numbers, rationals, reals, they were all very non-intuitive to the people at the time but were required to understand the science of the time.
I think the word mechanism captures what you are describing. We have a set of equations we know work, but we have absolutely no idea what underling mechanism gives rise to those equations. It's like the position ancient seafarers were in: the could use the sun and stars to navigate, but because they had no idea of the mechanism behind their movements they were happy with the idea the world was flat.
It's not a good state of affairs because understanding the mechanism yields far better predictive powers than the mathematical equation describing what happens. For example, we had good equations describing rechargeable battery degradation. But until we understood the mechanism, we were just stumbling about in the dark on how to improve it.
ptolemy might object, 'but we can calculate the answer with arbitrary precision!!' but his 'model' didn't capture reality in a meaningful way dispite the accuracy.
The same could be said of quantum mechanics
Something similar is going on now in QM.
And do you really think we have discovered the "axioms of the universe" already? That is quite haughty. No we don't have those.
We have models that perform well in certain regimes. Push those regimes, and the models break, then we find new and better models.. rinse and repeat. That is science. https://youtu.be/ka9KGqr5Wtw
* We have 'axioms' (I would not call them that. I would say models) that work in a limited regime e.g. quantum field theory or Maxwell's equations, but we don't know if they are truly fundamental - in that sense they are not axioms , which in math have a precise meaning.
That is also haughty.
It is possible--probable, even--that our current models of physics are incorrect. We should certainly continue to probe them and look for something better. I would bet money that before my lifetime is out, some part of QM or relativity are overturned just like newtonian physics.
However, you cannot just assume that that is the case. It is no certainty. We do not have certainty. The universe is sticky; it very well may be that we can never reduce it to something as simple as rule 30. It may be that our current theorems are axiomatic--at least, as far as the universe can be said to have axioms.
(Or, as I think is more likely in the universe where we never discover any more physics, the difference between our laws and 'truth' is smaller than is possible to detect. That is, any instrument we use to measure will inherently produce too much noise to produce a statistically significantly different result.)
No it is not, we don't even understand what causes quantum waves to collapse. We call it "observation" but we don't know what that is. So you can't say we understand quantum mechanics until we have a theory which can accurately predict when wavefunctions will collapse.
When two quantum systems interact their wave functions either gets entangled with each other or they cause each other to collapse, it seems like the first happens in small systems and the second happens in large systems, we don't know much more than that.
We are one experiment away from placing serious doubts even on counterfactual definiteness.
What is its range and speed? Does it work same in very low or very high energies? Does temperature affect it? Does it change at relativistic speeds?
Etc. The tool we have to probe it is currently only entanglement and secondarily tunneling. Maybe some calorimetry and charge detection.
The mental benefit of MWI is that instead of worrying about both entanglement and observation/wave function collapse, you only need to worry about entanglement because what Copenhagen describes as collapse is really just entanglement of the observed system with the observer.
The "observations" that other interpretations cause endless confusion about are simply interactions between the observed system and the observer, but "observed system" and "observer" are concepts without a corresponding physically reality. They're simply labels assigned by humans.
This cannot be more wrong.
Science advances with one unexpected experimental hypothesis failure at a time.
Sometimes QM provides us with no prediction whatsoever as to what will happen next (eg. photon splitting experiment.) I would not call this "excellent."
> chaotic nature
Chaos theory is something else.
> results out of CERN
Particle physics is also not particularly relevant to this discussion. Fundamental particles is a separate issue to interpretations (foundations) of QM.
John Von Neumann once said to Felix Smith, "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
Personally, I think they should start with the nomenclature. It may have been amusing at first to call things strange and up and down and colored, etc. but at this point it's a mess, especially when it's now clear that many particles are just the same thing with varying energy levels.
Also, while I'm on a rant, the double slit experiment is crap. It never shows the particle grouping pattern, just the interference pattern. They talk about measuring the photon at the slit, collapsing the wave function and creating a grouping as if by little ping-pong balls, but it's never demonstrated!
De Broglie called from afterlife to check if people still run simple experiments.
I believe they have done real experiments, Feynman mentions doing it with electrons going through the slit and a light source to make a flash by the slit when the electron passes. If you use short enough wavelength light to tell which slit then the interference goes. But true it was done in a lab sometime, not as a popular demonstration.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Esperimento-della-doppia...
Here is data showing particle grouping patterns. This forms the basis of the many-particle interference pattern.
If you put a detector near the slits to try to measure what passes through, then this pattern does not arise.
Have you ever seen an example of that? There's not a picture on the internet of two groupings that I can find.
He's been extolling this exact message for years.
I think he would say he's trying to de-woo QM by asking folks to think critically about it's principles
He is not saying that the predictions that QM gives is wrong.
He's a hard materialist and rejects the Copenhagen interpretation of QM (as many do who think intently about it) and prefers Many World's Interpretation, but admits there's more work to be done. He's saying in the article that folks should work on it.
If they accepted that the wave function with all it's weirdness is the particle they colud get a better feel for quantum mechanics.
Funny thing is that Schrodinger equation that describes how wave function evolves simplifies to classical movement equation if you consider "pointlike" wave function.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfest_theorem
There's no need for thinking that there's a collapse of the wave function and then some little ball pops up that's governed by different equation. The equation is the same. Just a lot od terms can be simplified if wave fuction is small and sharp. Just like there is no collapse when you slow down from relativistic speed even though you can now skip relativistic terms in equations and still get mostly correct result.
Basically classical mechanics is just Schrodinger equation for sharp, small wave functions.
So you don't need to think that due to measurement classical particle pops up out of fuzzy thing that the wave function is. Instead you can think instead that due to measurement wavefunction itself reshapes to be really narrow and sharp but it still obeys same shrodinger equation. Just now thanks to sharpness you can simplify the equation a lot so it becomes classical motion equations.
Hence it doesn't behave like a wave, also it doesn't behave like a particle, it behaves like a mix of both. That is quantum mechanics and we don't fully understand the maths of it yet, ie when do these waves behave like particles and when do they behave like waves ie when do the wave function collapse?
Nobody does that because that won't help you with predicting results of your experiments and it's way more work. But it gives you insight some people crave while others feel it's completely unnecessary.
They do not represent very condensed wave functions, have you taken even a single course in quantum mechanics? You should have learned about the Double slit experiment in high school at least, how do you explain that using only the schrödiner equation?
If there is a problem at the time of the measurement this is not something specific to the double slit, the same problem exists with a single slit and in any detection of any particle ever.
The final reshaping is so precise that given photon wave function gets condensed precisely to a single atom of a particle of the photographic dye.
Anything except for those reshapings is governed by Schrodinger equation.
> [Eigenvalues] do not represent very condensed wave functions
User kgwgk said: "Note that eigenvalues are wavefunctions just like any other state"
Even if mathematically they don't. Same way as limit of a function at some point outside the domain of a fuction is not a value of that function. But if you consider something close to that limit it is still value of that function.
Limits are useful for calculations but if the function represents someting real, limits unlike the function don't actually exist. They are one step more removed from reality than the function is.
What I'm saying is that it might be useful for developing intuition for quantum mechanics to consider that eigenvalues don't exist. That they are just mathematical constructs that are useful to represent wavefunctions that are close in shape to them.
The genral tendency is exactly opposite. To consider wave function to be mathematical construct (becouse complex numbers and no macroscopic analog) and eigenvectors and states they describe as reality (just because we measured something close to their precisely calculated values).
The only difference between passing through a slit and the measurement at the screen is the size and location of the "hole". Measurement at the screen is just a silt of the size of single atom.
If your measurement is just ensuring that photon passed through one slit not the other you no longer have interference pattern at the screen but you still get diffraction pattern. Your measurement didn't collapse a wave to single point because it wasn't precise enough.
And what would describe the interaction with the slits according to you?
Completely infeasible to calculate but I argue valuable to think about. :-)
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We reached max thread depth and I can't reply to your response. Not sure if you are going to see this.
If you are using electrons instead of photons for double slit experiment barrier still absorbs them. They get caught by atoms of the barrier or exchange virtual photons with electrons of the barrier. Shrodinger doesn't cover that I think.
Note that the detection on the screen is done using a scintillator/photomultiplier or something like that to amplifify the detection of a single electron into a measurable electric signal.
Making a wavefunction "narrow and sharp" means projecting it onto an eigenvector of your measurement basis (e.g. "spin up.") Projection is non-unitary and irreversible. Whether and how this can be achieved via the Schrodinger equation is what all the fuss is about.
Reshaping is caused by interaction. Interaction occurs with probability defined by wave functions.
The thing is, to predict results of experiments we don't really need to know how exactly wave function reshapes. It's enough to know how it "reshapes" to a specific point, that we from that moment on call a particle that came out of wavefunction collapse. You can consider as many points in as you need to calculate everything you want to know.
Hence current state of quantum mechanics where we can calculate everythig but don't feel as we have a full picture of what happens.
What "occurs" (that's the part we don't really understand) with probability defined by wave function is "measurement" but not every interaction is a measurement. A measurement is the macroscopic effect of interactions (which may or may not be fully described by Schroedinger's equation).
They are saying:
"For general systems, if the wave function is highly concentrated around a point [... the thing different between classical and quantum ...] will be almost the same, since both will be approximately equal to [...]. In that case, the expected position and expected momentum will approximately follow the classical trajectories, at least for as long as the wave function remains localized in position."
The problem is that, as he said, “the wave function would also thin out until it is smoothed out over the entire universe”.
Is the effect you are talking about the one described here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_particle
in section "Spread of a wave packet"?
“For example, if an electron wave packet is initially localized in a region of atomic dimensions (i.e., 10−10 m) then the width of the packet doubles in about 10−16 s. Clearly, particle wave packets spread out very rapidly indeed (in free space): For instance, after 1 ms, the width will have grown to about a kilometer.”
“Note that a very narrow initial wave packet instantly becomes infinitely wide, but with a phase which is more rapidly oscillatory at large values of x. This might seem strange — the solution goes from being localized at one point to being "everywhere" at all later times, but it is a reflection of the enormous momentum uncertainty of a localized particle, as explained above.”
It's very logical that a particle that might have any momentum quicky spreads out to be smoothly everywhere.
Particle with not that precise position and not that uncertain momentum should stay fairly comapct for large amount of time.
I think it never makes much sense to talk about a particle. In the wave particle duality, the particle part doesn't have many arguments for it. You can understand and calculate everything using waves. Just not macroscopic kind of waves but waves that have few peculiar qualities that macroscopic waves don't have.
Any way... Thank you for indulging my ramblings about the things I barely grasp. :-)
But so far as I can tell it started because Bohr was a bit of a tyrant and didn't like having the Copenhagen Interpretation questioned. So that set the tone for the first few decades. And QM was still developing, so it was more important to solve specific problems than worry about generalities.
After that, progress was still being made on the Standard Model, so there was academic selection pressure pushing graduates towards PhD specifics and away from more philosophical speculations about Quantum Origins.
And after that the String Theory people were much better at aggressive self-promotion than any of the competing QG theories. So something related happened again.
Now there's no data to allow further fundamental progress on the Standard Model. SM alternatives continue being ruled out. And String Theory has run into very serious problems, So there's more interest in Quantum Origins and alternative QG theories. The odds of a big breakthrough are very low, they're higher than they used to be.
And also it's really kind of annoying not to understand what's happening.
I'm not sure if that's a fair interpretation of history. At the time string theory still looked like the best option, and some say that even today it is the closest thing we have to a consistent theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wq9x2QcZN0
He goes into depths about the problems right now in academia
Richard Feynman
It's the same with all probanalistic descriptions of a phenomenon, isnt it?
You can use probability to model all kinds of things that you cannot (yet) directly model, cannot observe, and do not understand. It seems natural that it's a way to describe a system not well understood.
Isn't many worlds what you get when you interpret the Randomized Model as Truth?
You've got to remember we are talking about the technology which make nukes.
What if the physics world was as simple as the one we teach in high school, a simple classical world with a twist. In the 1950s there were even science kits for kids with Uranium. We were on the track towards a world with clean infinite energy. Clean, yes, because the first fusion bomb had just been tested, and fusion technology was just around the corner.
Then the cold war paranoia made everything change. The Vietnam War brought what ifs ?
What if the know how was so simple that any Vietcong could build a nuke ? What if one of those damn pacifists decided to make one at home ?
They gathered a few people from Los Alamos to seek council. The tale has it that it was Von Neumann that put the final nail in the coffin of the green world utopia. With machines using its architecture, it would, before a few decades, be simple for everyone to simulate everything from chemistry to atom bombs. It was simply not acceptable. They devised a plan to make sure that was not going to happen.
The beauty of science is that once you accept a false result, you can easily disprove the true theories. Then it's just a question of smoke and mirrors (should I say vapor chambers, and single particle detectors ?). Control the experiment results by making sure the experimenters know the theory it needs to prove.
That's how in 1964, a crackpot physicist made the world non-local. It was such a success to attract young new people to the field, that those who knew better played along.
Of course since then smart people saw through the veil and are thankful for the elders' wisdom to not free the dragon.
oh, and math too? All over the world? Seriously...
Come on, it's not that hard of a campfire story to understand, burning-man was last week and area 51 raid is very soon, you gotta step up your game...
Also famous for not winning the Nobel.
Time for the rabbit hole!
Maybe it was that refurbishing Boole's inequalities wasn't enough.
Gather a few mathematicians well-versed in probability theory, pick a wrong hypothesis, wrap with a theorem, don't get the conclusion, then take the contra-positive : It's like playing three-card Monte with physicists.