Slashdot Mirror
Study Says Quantum Wavefunction Is a Real Physical Object
cekerr writes with this excerpt from an article in Nature
"The wavefunction is a real physical object after all, say researchers. ... the new paper, by a trio of physicists led by Matthew Pusey at Imperial College London, presents a theorem showing that if a quantum wavefunction were purely a statistical tool, then even quantum states that are unconnected across space and time would be able to communicate with each other. As that seems very unlikely to be true, the researchers conclude that the wavefunction must be physically real after all. David Wallace, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford, UK, says that the theorem is the most important result in the foundations of quantum mechanics that he has seen in his 15-year professional career. 'This strips away obscurity and shows you can't have an interpretation of a quantum state as probabilistic,' he says."
"Abstract objects" or "mathematical objects" don't exist in general, so this suggestion is rather plausible. Of course, the reality of the wave function had been proposed before, but new arguments are sorely needed in philosophy of quantum mechanics.
--exa--
Yawn. Did these guys ever read Prince de Broglie?
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/Bohr_to_Waves/Bohr_to_Waves.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Broglie
A particle is a wave is a particle-wave; all we can say about the universe, is what we can say about the universe; there's no such thing as a "real physical object."
Because if the "wave function" is a real object, then there is no probabilistic nature to quantum shit - it just means we are currently unable to directly measure the "wave function" without "collapsing" it. If it's not probabilistic, all the fuzziness of quantum physics goes away. Schrodinger's cat is dead, Einstein was right when he said God doesn't play dice, entanglement is horse shit, everyone who works with string theory is a moron, etc.
An instance of considering an abstract concept -- which is what the collection of molecule is -- and the concept itself are different.
It's like people on Slashdot don't even know basic philosophy. I suppose that would explain why so many people thought The Matrix was interesting.
The funniest thing is that this paper is coming out in the midst of the discussion of faster-than-light neutrinos. According to the interpretation presented in the article blurb at top, FTL neutrinos should be forbidden. If they actually exist, however, then that means that the quantum wave function really is a stastical thing and not a physical thing.
In the Nature blurb, there's a bit of discussion at the end that quantum states might all be linked, entangled or not.
In most physics classes, you learn quantum mechanics by calculating the interactions between isolated states. This thought process is natural and useful for certain areas of physics, but you end up worrying about hidden variables and how particles which are essentially in different universes can possibly communicate. This view does not need the wave function to be real, it can just be a statistical tool.
An alternative way of thinking about things is the idea that there are no isolated states (and no measurement apparatus which can exist outside the quantum system). From that point of view, one wave function is sufficient to describe the entire universe, traced back to the big bang. You don't need to worry about spooky action, everything obeys causality just fine assuming the wave function is real. There are some cosmological issues still, and it's not clear such a unified state is possible in an infinite universe.
At least we're starting to all agree wave functions are real and not just a statistical tool.
"Concepts" cannot exist at all without some form of persistence. The persistence relies on physical objects (though I won't limit that to "chemical reactions" nor "in the brain" as per the parent post).
If a civilization develops the concept of boolean algebra, and then that civilization is completely destroyed and all record of the concept of boolean algebra is lost, "boolean algebra" ceases to exist. If another civilization arises and redevelops a concept that is in all respects similar, it is still not the same concept.
One could pretend to be an "outside observer", and compare the two concepts and call them the same concept, but then you have violated to conditions -- you have kept a record of what the concept from the destroyed civilization was, and that record exists in some physical form in order to get it from timespace A to timespace B.
Now it is tempting to say that since concepts like boolean algebra are developed methodically with a set of indisputable rules from axioms that they are "real" without being physical, but that presupposes that even stating the axioms does not rely on physical phenomena.
In other words, "mathematics" is really a verb when you get right down to it.
Someone had to do it.
I think it's great.
I think the wave function is a physically real object(*), and the randomness is not intrinsic or magically special but comes from thermodynamics and chaos, and, yes, Einstein was right: Copenhagen is a nonsensical load of bollocks.
More specifically that dice are not actually random in an ineffable sense, but their practical use has a sufficiently high Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy rate (roughly average amount of chaos generated per time) that they're random enough. In other words, quantum mechanics is regular physics, not mystical Copenhagen mumbo jumbo. Copenhagen works for computation, but that's because it's a very useful approximation for experimentally relevant circumstances, just like Fermi's "Golden Rules". Einstein was right, at least about the problem. His proposed solutions weren't, but the experimental evidence wasn't available until after he died and obviously he would have changed his mind given new results, because he was a physicist foremost and not a mystical philosopher.
Entanglement and uncertainty principle are not horse shit, because the central mystery of QM, that everything is operating in a Hilbert space still remains.
(*) To me, physically real means "acts as a source term in gravitation". This pretty clearly distinguishes "electrons/protons/photons" from "set of all sets of sets" crap and is as useful as any other description I know. Of course we don't have quantum gravity working yet but when we do it's pretty likely something like the wavefunction will be in there.
If quantum states that are unconnected across space and time are able to communicate with each other, then:
a) Single photons can interfere with themselves (has been done)
b) Interference patterns will work across time just as well as they can across space (has been done)
So unless I'm missing something, their claim that it is unlikely would appear flawed.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)