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Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

quantamagazine.org

221–230 of 306 posts

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#221
"If there is indeed a background perturbation that provokes quantum collapse — whether it comes from gravitational effects or something else — then all particles will be continuously interacting with this perturbation, whether they are in a superposition or not."

This makes eminent sense to me.

I have a notion that I'll try to present in its simplest form which is that a quantum system exists in background 'sea' or 'substrate' akin to random noise whose maximum fluctuations are of themselves insufficient to disturb or perturb said quantum system.

Without this noise an 'event' such as a particle, photon etc. would perturb the quantum system in a predictable way thus it would 'collapse' into a predictable outcome (according to understood physics).

As the noisy substrate permeates and superimposes on everything it randomizes the 'collapse'. Of course, we'd have to invoke notions such as virtual particles zero point energy, Casimir-like effects—even then, saying that is a gross oversimplification without much additional amplification. Perhaps it's best just to say that essentially a noisy fluctuating background environment would perturb and randomize an otherwise predictable quantum system.

Again, like many of these theories, I've little to support my idea except intuition—and with quantum mechanics relying on it is a very dangerous thing to do.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#222
post #3

Looking 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…

Except that in this context it isn't mumbo-jumbo at all. It's a falsifiable theory proposed by one of the most distinguished mathematical physicists in the world, in the process of being falsified. Perfectly respectable, though highly speculative, science. The article didn't include it for lulz and clicks. It's directly relevant.

No one apart from Penrose took it seriously. You might as well say that Russell's Teapot is falsifiable because you only need to look through a finite amount of space to prove it's not there.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#223

This article is a perfect example how science is getting led into dark areas by people who didn't learn quantum mechanics right or people who pretend to understand it, but can only blindly follow the formalism without much understanding of what they actually do. Every such article continuous to mysticize the whole subject by quoting famous scientists who were either puzzled by it at the time or scientists like John v…

This is just _one_ interpretation of wave function collapse and the only thing it has going for it is that the dimensionality in which collapse happens can always require another particle, which adds another complex degree of freedom, and always remains out of the realm of what we can compute. Two particle interactions show nothing like wave function collapse, neither to three of four. Until you say a reasonable numb…

Nothing "weird" starts happening. Unitarity evolution is never broken, there are just rules in quantum mechanics that could perhaps be grouped under supplementary framework related to how we, macroscopic entities, extract information from it.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#224

Don't tell anyone, but in the back of my mind I wonder if what we call quantum mechanics has something to do with the rendering engine in this simulation we find ourselves in. Is quantum collapse just us "catching" the engine deciding what to render when we observe something? :-)

The tricky part with using quantum physics as evidence for a simulation is that it's weird, but it's only a specific amount of weird. A simulated universe could easily be weirder; why isn't P=NP obviously true?

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just _one_ interpretation of wave function collapse and the only thing it has going for it is that the dimensionality in which collapse happens can always require another particle, which adds another complex degree of freedom, and always remains out of the realm of what we can compute. Two particle interactions show nothing like wave function collapse, neither to three of four. Until you say a reasonable numb…

Nothing "weird" starts happening. Unitarity evolution is never broken, there are just rules in quantum mechanics that could perhaps be grouped under supplementary framework related to how we, macroscopic entities, extract information from it.

>Until you say a reasonable number of particles that make up the measuring apparatus where we should see _something_ weird starting to happen theoretically you're not even wrong.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing "weird" starts happening. Unitarity evolution is never broken, there are just rules in quantum mechanics that could perhaps be grouped under supplementary framework related to how we, macroscopic entities, extract information from it.

>Until you say a reasonable number of particles that make up the measuring apparatus where we should see _something_ weird starting to happen theoretically you're not even wrong.

Just saying something twice doesn't make it true. The "weird" thing you were perhaps referring too starts at very beginning of quantum mechanics framework. The Born rule is just a "conversion" of predictions of quantum framework to our classical language. The only option you have is to reject quantum mechanics as a whole and not try to patch it - because this clearly will not work.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#227
post #4

There 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…

"Some smart people have tried to make theories where wave function collapse is a real thing."

Aa a function is a mathematical abstraction, I don't see how it could be real... unless you believe the world is made of math..

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in this context it isn't mumbo-jumbo at all. It's a falsifiable theory proposed by one of the most distinguished mathematical physicists in the world, in the process of being falsified. Perfectly respectable, though highly speculative, science. The article didn't include it for lulz and clicks. It's directly relevant.

No one apart from Penrose took it seriously. You might as well say that Russell's Teapot is falsifiable because you only need to look through a finite amount of space to prove it's not there.

[deleted]

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in this context it isn't mumbo-jumbo at all. It's a falsifiable theory proposed by one of the most distinguished mathematical physicists in the world, in the process of being falsified. Perfectly respectable, though highly speculative, science. The article didn't include it for lulz and clicks. It's directly relevant.

No one apart from Penrose took it seriously. You might as well say that Russell's Teapot is falsifiable because you only need to look through a finite amount of space to prove it's not there.

The theory made predictions that could be - and have been (read the article) - shown false. Do you have some other definition of falsifiability?

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#230
post #92
post #4

There 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…

That's right: the "collapse" interpretation is an approximation. You can derive if from the MWI. We already know that the "worlds" separate and almost completely cease interacting. The interactions decrease to the order of "two to the power of Avogadro's number" almost immediately. The collapse interpretation rounds that to zero (at some arbitrary point). To make that more concrete you have to add a term to the equat…

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