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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

#31

Post by q-big »

henning wrote: post #15

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.

In my experience, it is not really the money in the corporate job market that drives these people away from research:

Not USA, but I know some really highly talented physicists who now work as rather badly paid software developers. Lesson: outstanding skills in and passion for physics not necessarily tranfer into high pay in the corporate job market.

It is rather the politicization and lack of perspective in academia that makes these people leave academia: doing your PhD/doctorial degree in physics already bears a high opportunity cost, so you really do that because you have a deep passion for physics and not because you expect a high pay.

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

#32

Post by aeternum »

floxy wrote: post #16
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.

Wolfram has a proposal, by that very name.

Hasn't yet made useful predictions though.

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

#33

Post by yyyk »

>But the researchers concede that the result will make no difference to anyone who believes in Many-Worlds, Copenhagen, or Pilot-Wave Theory. It only reduces the range of options by one, at most.

This is a bit too pessimistic. There's the possibility their experiment will confirm local realist retrocasuality (by finding a result different from what typical QM would suggest) - at which point we will have reduced the options considerably.

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

#34

Post by layer8 »

jijji wrote: post #27

The author writes that he is "still waiting for a straight answer as to what the structure of the atoms that make up my body is". The answer to this is more of a biochemistry or molecular biology question than a quantum physics question.

He didn’t mean the structures between the atoms, but the structures within the atoms.

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

#35

Post by pshc »

8bitsrule wrote: post #28

Even on the macro level there are lots of tricky questions. A bar magnet is surrounded by magnetic flux lines. Apparently it takes no energy to maintain that magnetic field. If I heat the bar in boiling water for long enough, it becomes demagnetized. On the macro level there's no visible/measureable change in the bar. We need a lot of magnification to see that the 'particles are no longer aligned'. On the other hand,…

The energy comes from the incredible magnetic force spent to align the atoms when the magnet was created, and it will be slowly exhausted over time.

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

#36

Post by janitor61 »

not1ofU wrote: post #23
wpietri wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is cool IMO (2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRSBaq3vAeY Apologies if its considered off topic - I see double slit experiment and I always think of this. It blew my mind.

Pretty fascinating stuff, seems like it's time to implement some quantum CAPTCHAs

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

#37

Post by vba616 »

floxy wrote: post #16
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.

Due to the mixed reviews, I haven't bothered to read

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science
even though I assume that the target audience is more or less people who were fascinated with

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos:_Making_a_New_Science

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

#38

Post by BobbyJo »

8bitsrule wrote: post #28

Even on the macro level there are lots of tricky questions. A bar magnet is surrounded by magnetic flux lines. Apparently it takes no energy to maintain that magnetic field. If I heat the bar in boiling water for long enough, it becomes demagnetized. On the macro level there's no visible/measureable change in the bar. We need a lot of magnification to see that the 'particles are no longer aligned'. On the other hand,…

> It takes energy to lift these filings. Where does that energy come from? (It never seems to be exhausted.)

That's potential energy. When you made the magnet, you created a potential between everything else and the magnet. When you unmake the magnet, you change the potential again in the other direction. Changing said potential consumes energy.

The potential can be exhausted as only so much mass/magnetic-potential can fit within the magnets field. To use the field with more stuff, you have to pull some stuff out of the field, which takes energy.

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

#39

Post by mhh__ »

tus666 wrote: post #29
mhh__ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eithe…

We need to go back to the 1920s and start again. As the article explains, modern QM has hit a dead end, and it's little more than mathematical games that have not helped us understand reality.

Those mathematical games quite literally have helped us understand reality. The standard model made predictions, which were then tested.

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

#40

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

8bitsrule wrote: post #28

Even on the macro level there are lots of tricky questions. A bar magnet is surrounded by magnetic flux lines. Apparently it takes no energy to maintain that magnetic field. If I heat the bar in boiling water for long enough, it becomes demagnetized. On the macro level there's no visible/measureable change in the bar. We need a lot of magnification to see that the 'particles are no longer aligned'. On the other hand,…

Huh? Iron filings fly up because of the principle of minimum potential energy. They can lose potential energy by moving closer to the magnet, so they do. No energy is gained - potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, then heat when they hit the magnet.
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