Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
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Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#2So, pilot wave theory remains a strong intuitive model, by confirming an inability to perfectly predict the future state of a system of quantum events.
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#3All the paradoxes disappear if we use Quantum Field Theory instead of Quantum Mechanics. I would really like someone with deep knowledge on Quantum Theory to explain if something is wrong with a theory that otherwise makes a lot of sense to me. A good read on the topic is the paper "There are no particles, there are only fields" — https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616.pdf
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#4All the paradoxes disappear if we use Quantum Field Theory instead of Quantum Mechanics. I would really like someone with deep knowledge on Quantum Theory to explain if something is wrong with a theory that otherwise makes a lot of sense to me. A good read on the topic is the paper "There are no particles, there are only fields" — https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616.pdf
You can say that the only thing that exists is the quantum wave function, as what basically this paper says (particles are epiphenomena). That is basically hard-line Everettianism e.g. many worlds. There are still problems. QFT does not explain gravity very well either.
The paper claims "it's neutral on the interpretations" - it is not.
You have the most senior research professor of physics at caltech admitting there are problems still - there are of course physicists that insist they have the correct answer or interpretation - the hard part is convincing enough physicists to agree with them, which they universally do not agree.
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#5Why does this matter? Does anybody seriously question whether the basic math can work? So somebody found a nice parallel between pilot wave theory and another physical phenomenon, but then the parallel wasn't as strong as thought. This experiment is the equivalent of arguing that light isn't a particle because your tennis ball doesn't bounce off the wall the way you thought it would.
When I saw the droplet experiments, I thought "that's cool, but it doesn't prove anything about pilot wave theory because the arguments are over much deeper things than what this is demonstrating". Debunking it is just as meaningless. The people who actually know about this stuff are arguing over determinism and non-locality and what not. I thought oil droplets are just a nice way to introduce people to the concept.
Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about any of this
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#6So, am I right in thinking that we have.
1. Theory X hypothesizes Q
2. Phenomenon Y models theory X
3. Phenomenon Y does not demonstrate Q
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#7Why does this matter? Does anybody seriously question whether the basic math can work? So somebody found a nice parallel between pilot wave theory and another physical phenomenon, but then the parallel wasn't as strong as thought. This experiment is the equivalent of arguing that light isn't a particle because your tennis ball doesn't bounce off the wall the way you thought it would. When I saw the droplet experiment…
That's absolutely right. There's nothing surprising in this article, and it doesn't provide any new support to any theory.
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#8Why does this matter? Does anybody seriously question whether the basic math can work? So somebody found a nice parallel between pilot wave theory and another physical phenomenon, but then the parallel wasn't as strong as thought. This experiment is the equivalent of arguing that light isn't a particle because your tennis ball doesn't bounce off the wall the way you thought it would. When I saw the droplet experiment…
That's absolutely right. There's nothing surprising in this article, and it doesn't provide any new support to any theory.
So.you are essentially saying that that oil droplet on water analog cannot be treated as an analog computer (in every sense of the word) for pilot wave theory?
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#9I was thinking about the double-slit problem the other day, and was trying to make connections to any other phenomenon that exists in the natural world and I think I came up with one.
In conditional probability theory, there exists something called the boy or girl paradox. The paradox shows that the likelihood of an event can be drastically affected by how you know even seemingly innocuous information. I think that observation of the atoms passing through the slit is affecting the search space for the other atoms in such a way that we currently do not understand. This observation while seemingly innocuous has a drastic affect on the distribution which would explain why we see such confounding results. It follows the same logic as this other naturally occurring phenomenon so I think its an avenue at least worth exploring.
An example of the paradox would be if I told you that my neighbor has 2 children and at least one of them is a boy. If I asked you what the probability that their other child is a girl, normally the result would be 2 / 3, but if I know one child is a boy because I spot him in front of a tree then the odds his other child is a girl drops to 1 / 2.
Re: Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to double-slit interference
#10So, am I right in thinking that we have. 1. Theory X hypothesizes Q 2. Phenomenon Y models theory X 3. Phenomenon Y does not demonstrate Q Surely there would be an insurmountable burden of proof on 2. Similarity does not mean identical. For any Y claiming to be the same as X, why can't it be rebutted with a "No it isn't" Proving that they are the same would be a different thing altogether but if as the article sugges…
That's a fair observation. Though, I think the thought experiment to about the distance between the two slits as irrelevant to QM more concretely disproves the pilot wave theory.
Most physicists when asked about QM will just say that this is a useful model to predict the outcomes of experiments. In fact the most successful model, ever. The magic that happens in the middle is currently untestable and thus uninteresting beyond philosophy.
The problem with determinism is that it introduces more complexity to the model without improving any accuracy. Moreover, it doesn't help us predict the outcome of any experiments.
Even if this experiment was successful, who cares? Does it change the math or predictions? Science works in a very simple way. We have evidence about how the universe works. We make models to explain that evidence. The models also make predictions about new evidence that we would expect to see. New evidence appears and either confirms or limits the domain of the model. Basically nothing but gravity has limited the domain of QM.