Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
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Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#2Note that this was not the "mainstream" explanation. It was not even the most popular explanation.
Everyone agree about the math, but there are a few interpretations of quantum mechanics. All are weird and equivalente, so it's not possible to make an experiment to decide which one is the correct one.
There are a few attempt like this to extend QM and get a less weird theory, but it looks like this failed, at least with the more simple model for the extension. Anyway, most people just use "Shut up and calculate".
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#3Looking out for quantum consciousness in articles about quantum physics would be a good drinking game, though here it is handled with a proper amount of scepticism.
The pressure is enormous for writers to include mumbo-jumbo, because people click on these articles expecting to find out that it's possible to alter the Universe with psyhic abilities, which is how quantum physics is represented in social media, especially TikTok.
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#4There is an often-repeated statement that different quantum mechanical theories are equivalent. This is an over-simplification. Is wave function collapse is a real thing or just an approximation of what happens when a large system is entangled?
Some smart people have tried to make theories where wave function collapse is a real thing. These new experiments are working to rule out those ideas.
My feeling is that Everett's "many worlds" interpretation is the clear favorite: there is no wave function collapse.
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#5In true collapse-of-the-gaps style, what if collapse happens when an entangled system becomes so large that the edges of it are outside of each others event horizons due to cosmic inflation?
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#6Looking out for quantum consciousness in articles about quantum physics would be a good drinking game, though here it is handled with a proper amount of scepticism. The pressure is enormous for writers to include mumbo-jumbo, because people click on these articles expecting to find out that it's possible to alter the Universe with psyhic abilities, which is how quantum physics is represented in social media, especial…
Having been passionate about this for awhile, I have a layman’s surface overview of the state of physics, or I like to believe so.
It amused me to no end when my elderly aunt came to ask me for a tl;dr; on Quantum Physics. She stopped me shortly asking how she can control the universe with her mind.
I tried to explain a bit about the famous interpretation (Copenhagen, not Von Neumann–Wigner) but she would have none of it because the business course she just attended had a segment on how to control the universe and proceeded to disregard and mock me.
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#7Note that this was not the "mainstream" explanation. It was not even the most popular explanation. Everyone agree about the math, but there are a few interpretations of quantum mechanics. All are weird and equivalente, so it's not possible to make an experiment to decide which one is the correct one. There are a few attempt like this to extend QM and get a less weird theory, but it looks like this failed, at least wi…
I have a PhD in theoretical quantum optics and I can assure you that it absolutely was (and still is) a mainstream explanation
EDIT: I misread the article, I thought it was about whether collapse occurs in general, not about physical explanations for collapse
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#8In true collapse-of-the-gaps style, what if collapse happens when an entangled system becomes so large that the edges of it are outside of each others event horizons due to cosmic inflation?
I think you mean expansion rather than inflation (inflation is something that happened very briefly at the beginning of the universe). In models with collapse, the collapse happens instantaneously, no matter what
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#9There is an often-repeated statement that different quantum mechanical theories are equivalent. This is an over-simplification. Is wave function collapse is a real thing or just an approximation of what happens when a large system is entangled? Some smart people have tried to make theories where wave function collapse is a real thing. These new experiments are working to rule out those ideas. My feeling is that Evere…
Disproving some form of measurable wave function does not provide evidence for MWI, which is unmeasurable and untestable nearly by definition.
Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness
#10Note that this was not the "mainstream" explanation. It was not even the most popular explanation. Everyone agree about the math, but there are a few interpretations of quantum mechanics. All are weird and equivalente, so it's not possible to make an experiment to decide which one is the correct one. There are a few attempt like this to extend QM and get a less weird theory, but it looks like this failed, at least wi…
I have a PhD in theoretical quantum optics and I can assure you that it absolutely was (and still is) a mainstream explanation EDIT: I misread the article, I thought it was about whether collapse occurs in general, not about physical explanations for collapse
Please explain the mistake in the article.
> The experiments find no evidence of the effects predicted by at least the simplest varieties of these collapse models.