Category: Alternate Interpretations

As we have seen, trying to explain the meaning of quantum physics can lead us far afield in many different directions. A lot of it sounds like science fiction, or just wild speculation. As we’ve mentioned, a lack of answers in this area doesn’t stop physicists from doing physics, especially in the microscopic realm. In…

A lot of the difficulty in understanding quantum physics hinges on the question of free will. We’re confused because it seems that we can decide to measure either the wave properties or particle properties in the same system, and our decision determines whether wave properties or particle properties are seen. But does free will truly…

The Schroedinger’s Cat Gedankenexperiment helped us appreciate the measurement problem by bringing superposition up from the microscopic world to the more familiar macroscopic scale. But it raised the problem of what we would see if we could see inside the closed box. If the very act of seeing always and immediately gets rid of the…

Classical physics made great progress for many years, all the while insisting on a total separation between observers and the reality they observed. Objective reality was everything that existed apart from the observers, stuff that would exist and would have the same properties whether or not anyone was around to see it. But with quantum…

Many of the problems we run across in trying to understand quantum physics are apparent conflicts with standard logic. To avoid the need to go too deeply into formal logic, we have usually presented arguments that appeal to common sense (based on our experience with the everyday world). The rules of formal logic are abstract,…

Yet another way to deal with the puzzling aspects of quantum physics is to completely redefine objective reality. After all, everything we know about the world must be filtered through our various senses. And we know of many cases where our senses can be fooled, such as optical illusions. Maybe our entire image of the…

Despite the triumph of Bell’s theorem, there have been a few serious attempts to apply the concept of hidden variables to get around the apparent lack of objective (observer-independent) reality at the quantum level. Interpretations of this type retain both objective reality and determinism, by postulating a real physical quantity or “force” that we have…

We’ll begin with a completely different way of dealing with the measurement problem. As you’ll recall, the conventional interpretation of quantum physics says that something dramatic happens to wave functions when a measurement occurs. Let’s consider the simple case of a single quantum particle. Before a measurement, its wave function may be spread over a…

Trying to figure out the true meaning of quantum physics and the nature of reality is a tall order. Although a lot has been written and said on the subject in the last few decades, it’s worth noting that many practicing physicists would say most of this discussion is well outside the realm of physics.…