onsdag 28 mars 2018

The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics



The new book What Is Real: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics by AdamBecker gives yet another account of quantum mechanics still in a state of deep confusion 100 years after its conception:
  • Thus, nearly a century after quantum theory was first developed—after it has thoroughly altered the world and the lives of every single human in it, both for better and worse—we still don’t know what it’s telling us about the nature of reality. This thoroughly strange story is the subject of this book. This is an astonishing state of affairs, and hardly anyone outside of physics knows about it. 
  • Quantum physics works, but ignoring what it tells us about reality means papering over a hole in our understanding of the world—and ignoring a larger story about science as a human process. Specifically, it ignores a story about failure: a failure to think across disciplines, a failure to insulate scientific pursuits from the corrupting influence of big money and military contracts, and a failure to live up to the ideals of the scientific method. And this failure matters to every thinking inhabitant of our world, a world whose every corner has been reshaped by science. 
  • But why should anyone else care? After all, quantum physics certainly works. For that matter, why should physicists care? Their mathematics makes accurate predictions; isn’t that enough?
  • So what is real? Pilot waves? Many worlds? Spontaneous collapse? Which interpretation of quantum physics is the right one? I don’t know. 
  • Every interpretation has its critics (though the proponents of basically every non-Copenhagen interpretation are usually agreed that Copenhagen is the worst of the lot). 
  • Somehow, something is going on in the world that is related to the mathematics of quantum physics. There is a correct interpretation, though it may not be any of the ones that we have yet.
  • Simply dismissing the quantum world as a convenient mathematical fiction means we aren’t taking our best theories of the world seriously enough, and we are hobbling ourselves in the search for a new theory. 
  • Stating that the conclusions of the Copenhagen interpretation are “inevitable” or “forced upon us by the mathematics of the theory” is simply wrong. 
  • It is not true that it’s meaningless to talk about reality existing independently of our perceptions, that we must think of the world solely as the subject of our observations.
  • The Copenhagen interpretation, with its vagueness, its seeming promise of a fundamental role for human consciousness, and its bevy of internal contradictions, has turned quantum physics into a wellspring of purported scientific support feeding a constant river of New Age nonsense and junk pseudo-science.
So there we have it: New Age nonsense and junk pseudo-science and other evils are rooted in the fact that quantum mechanics does not describe a reality existing independent of observation, but something else which is beyond human understanding.

In this state of no hope I suggest that you take a look at a new approach named Real Quantum Mechanics also presented in blog posts under the label RealQM.

In short, Real Quantum Mechanics offers a new type of Schrödinger equation as a free boundary problem i three space dimensions which has a direct real physical meaning. This is to be compared with the standard multi-dimensional Schrödinger equation, which can only be given a non-real non-physical statistical meaning and which is the origin of the confusion.



5 kommentarer:

  1. What does your theory say about the double slit experiment?

    SvaraRadera
  2. RealQM is a wave model and not any form of particle model.

    SvaraRadera
  3. Sorry, I don't get you so I reformulate the same question:
    Does your theory make any prediction about the double slit experiment (if so, which)?
    If the answer to the reformulated question is 'no', it would seem to be a drawback, since a main motivation behind quantum mechanics was to explain the double slit experiment.

    SvaraRadera
  4. RealQM is a wave model and so predicts an interference pattern.

    SvaraRadera
  5. OK, thanks. So e.g. an electron is entirely a wave and not a particle in your model(?)

    SvaraRadera