November 13, 2024
Another dimension may explain time and quantum mechanics
In a 4D universe governed by Einstein’s and Schroedinger’s equations for gravity and quantum mechanics both ideas cannot be correct. Yet seemingly they are. Time is a road and a flow.
In a 4D universe governed by Einstein’s and Schroedinger’s equations for gravity and quantum mechanics both ideas cannot be correct. Yet seemingly they are. Time is a road and a flow.

The problem of how to interpret quantum mechanics has been baffling physicists for 100 years. How do you understand the phenomenon where a particle or anything for that matter can be in two states at once? This is the so-called Schroedinger’s cat paradox in which a cat is both dead and alive until you look. Likewise, a quantum particle can be in two or more places at once, seemingly, creating the famous double slit experiment in which a particle appears to interfere with itself.

Weirder still, particles can become entangled, sharing a state even when they are separated by light years so that when one is looked at, it affects the other one’s state.

The traditional interpretation of this, championed by Heisenberg (and erroneously attributed to Niels Bohr), was a phenomenon called wavefunction collapse, in which looking at a quantum particle causes its state to collapse into one. This is called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics.

Contemporary physicists who care about such notions love to knock down Copenhagen, which is little more than a strawman argument (an argument deliberately constructed to be easy to knock down like a straw man). Copenhagen is made stronger by modifying the equations of quantum mechanics, of course, using, for example, something called dynamic reduction equations which deliberately model the collapse. Nevertheless, there are many, many interpretations of quantum physics beyond wavefunction collapse, all with their own adherents.

[Interesting Read]

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