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It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

nautil.us

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Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#11

Post by mhh__ »

jiggawatts wrote: post #4
jleyank wrote: post #2

From the point of view of chemistry, QM “works”. It provides results that can be tested experimentally and predictions that can be validated. There are issues with computability but that’s more engineering than science. Determining structure, spectra and other physical properties is quite helpful. What was the cliche? All theories are wrong, some theories are useful. It needs to be rephrased from vector codes into ma…

To me, this always felt like programmers excusing abhorrent code with "but it works". Quantum theory isn't. It's not a single, cohesive, consistent theory.[1] There is no recipe you can apply, it's just a bunch of guessworks and heuristics that happen to produce the numerically correct equations if you keep trying long enough. This isn't secret or some sort of external criticism, you'll find this front-and-centre in…

The things that Schrodinger tried are still valid physics, just for different systems. He didn't know that, but now we do, this has little bearing on modern physics.

Also chemists have the luxury of agreeing because the fundamentals of their work (not the day to day act of doing chemistry) gets to assume the presence of physics i.e. it's stampkeeping (depending on who you ask).

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#12

Post by tus666 »

wpietri wrote: post #9
tus666 wrote: post #3

Yes, but go back to philosophy not math. All the evidence suggests the "particle" interpretation of QM is simply wrong, that light or energy really is just a self propagating wave, which explains the double slit experiment cleanly, and is not incompatible with energy levels or quantization if formulated correctly. Experiments that claim to show light consists of particles need to be reassessed wearing a philosopher's…

Could you point to some articles on this? It's way outside of my field, but it sounds very interesting.

It is more than just interesting, it's the central unsolved conundrum in physics

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_m...

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#13

Post by dzdt »

One avenue for progress that the author overlooks is distinguising between quantum mechanics interpretations where wave function collapse is considered part of the theory vs. where wave function collapse is considered to be a useful approximation.

I expect as we see quantum computers increase in scale it will become more apparent and accepted that there is no such thing as "collapse": that is just the approximation for a large system including the observer becoming entangled with a smaller quantum system under consideration.

I think even the disillusioned author here would have to take that as progress.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#14

Post by mhh__ »

wpietri wrote: post #9
tus666 wrote: post #3

Yes, but go back to philosophy not math. All the evidence suggests the "particle" interpretation of QM is simply wrong, that light or energy really is just a self propagating wave, which explains the double slit experiment cleanly, and is not incompatible with energy levels or quantization if formulated correctly. Experiments that claim to show light consists of particles need to be reassessed wearing a philosopher's…

Could you point to some articles on this? It's way outside of my field, but it sounds very interesting.

The person you are replying to is either wrong or has stated it very badly.

The idea of their being both a wave and particle based description of photons that don't mix well is basically physics as known in the 1920s. The modern theoretical framework of light is quantum field theory (special relativity + quantum mechanics, but actually not quite that for [insert qft textbook] reasons...), which doesn't fit into either of those old ideals particularly well because they are basically shadows of an underlying model projected at different angles.

Edit (further detail): The way physics is taught in British secondary schools is a tragedy - ignoring that you don't even learn the fundamentals properly (no calculus!) - you aren't given a non-mathematical outline of these modern theories. In their eyes quantum mechanics has not really advanced beyond the photoelectric effect, which is where unhelpful weirdness like you'll see in this thread comes from.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#15

Post by henning »

Most of the bright people who could potentially come up with a major breakthrough would rather make >= 10x the money working as quants for hedge funds, software engineers/data scientists/product managers at FAANG or other adtech, or developing copy-and-paste pump and dump shitcoins named after Elon Musk's dog.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#16

Post by floxy »

geijoenr wrote: post #5

For some time already we are in an "epicyclean phase" of physics, trapped by the extraordinary predictive success of Quantum Electrodynamics and still using mathematical methods devised in the 19th century (variational calculus). This has lead us to the current situation, with extremely complicated theories at the limit of human understanding that bear no new results. It will take a modern day Copernicus to come up w…

Hmm, a new kind of science.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#17

Post by jleyank »

mhh__ wrote: post #11
jiggawatts wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this always felt like programmers excusing abhorrent code with "but it works". Quantum theory isn't. It's not a single, cohesive, consistent theory.[1] There is no recipe you can apply, it's just a bunch of guessworks and heuristics that happen to produce the numerically correct equations if you keep trying long enough. This isn't secret or some sort of external criticism, you'll find this front-and-centre in…

The things that Schrodinger tried are still valid physics, just for different systems. He didn't know that, but now we do, this has little bearing on modern physics. Also chemists have the luxury of agreeing because the fundamentals of their work (not the day to day act of doing chemistry) gets to assume the presence of physics i.e. it's stampkeeping (depending on who you ask).

Not quite stamp collecting, although botany or anatomy head in that direction. Call chemistry “just applied physics” as engineering is “just applied science”.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#18

Post by blueprint »

tus666 wrote: post #3

Yes, but go back to philosophy not math. All the evidence suggests the "particle" interpretation of QM is simply wrong, that light or energy really is just a self propagating wave, which explains the double slit experiment cleanly, and is not incompatible with energy levels or quantization if formulated correctly. Experiments that claim to show light consists of particles need to be reassessed wearing a philosopher's…

aiui, professional physicists don't think particles are "real" but a phenomenon that appears as a result of attempting to localize a wavefunction through a measurement

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#20

Post by zem »

stevebmark wrote: post #8

Sigh, yet another Nautil.us article. One or two meaningful paragraphs buried in a clickbait title by someone bored with their own academic work.

I'm not sure what your complaint with this particular piece is. it seemed like a coherent and well explained argument that the current interpretations of quantum mechanics might just be a blind alley caused by starting from the wrong mathematical foundations - you needn't agree, and the author themself admits that most physicists wouldn't either - but it's not by any means clickbait; it delivers exactly what the title promises.
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