Quantum Physics Parts Ways With Reality

aeoneal sends us to PhysicsWeb for news guaranteed to induce headache in those wedded to the reality of, well, reality. Researchers from the University of Vienna have shown the violation of a stronger form of Bell's inequality known as Leggett's inequality. The result means that we must not only give up Einstein's hope of "no spooky action at a distance," we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking. From the article: "[Studies] have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption — realism, locality, or both — is discordant with quantum mechanics." From the Nature abstract: "Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned." Only subscribers to Nature, alas, can know what features those are, as PhysicsWeb doesn't tell us.

Comments

This day will live in infamy

[mattr]

They killed the goose. It means the door is still open to wierd ideas like FTL, causality breakdown, the world as a simulation, the infinite probability drive, the bistromathic drive and oh, er, uhm, magic. It leers sideways at the anthropic principle, saying that the laws of the universe may be appropriate for human life but still appear to have a good deal of wiggle room, if not fully fledged bandersnatches and snarks hiding in wait. It means the rock-solid, steel-cased words physicists used to use to describe the world are really squishy, feeble things you wouldn't want to bet your life on. "Light Cone" indeed! You, giggling yes you, go out into the hall.