Busy day in Physics…
“An article on the work titled ‘Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality’ recently published in Foundations of Physics, a prestigious, refereed academic journal, supports Albert Einstein’s long-debated belief that quantum physics is incomplete. For eight decades the scientific community generally had supported Niels Bohr’s ideas commonly known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. In 1927, in his ‘Principle of Complementarity,’ he asserted that in any experiment light shows only one aspect at a time, either it behaves as a wave or as a particle. Einstein was deeply troubled by that principle, since he could not accept that any external measurement would prevent light to reveal its full dual nature, according to Afshar. The fundamental problem, however, seemed to be that one has to destroy the photon in order to measure either aspects of it. Then, once destroyed, there is no light left to measure the other aspect.”
If this result is verified and the implications are accepted, then we’ll all have to reconsider the claims of the experiments which support Bell’s Theorem and which prove contrary to the above experiment that Quantum Physics is in fact a complete theory.
Something’s borked somewhere. Cool!
Read the rest here: Physicists Modify Double-Slit Experiment to Confirm Einstein’s Belief
” then we’ll all have to reconsider the claims of the experiments which support Bell’s Theorem and which prove contrary to the above experiment that Quantum Physics is in fact a complete theory”
Not really. The affirmation of Bell’s Theorem by Aspect and others does not show QM to be a complete theory. It merely rules out the possibility of local realist theories. The Bell Inequalities are perfectly consistent with nonlocal realist hidden variable theories like Bohmian mechanics. I am always surprised to find current graduate textbooks like Sukara make the claim that Bell rules out Bohm, or show QM complete.
Thanks Phil. That’s not my understanding, but it wasn’t my area of specialization either.
Got a link or a suggestion or a paper that I can read to get more up to speed?
Nicholas
I’ll get back with a more extensive answer soon, but off the top of my head I would recommend several articles by Cushing (detailed references later). Holland has a book entitled The Quantum Theory of Motion that lays out a consistent version of nonlocal realistic Bohmian mechanics that reproduces ALL of the predictions of traditional QM. Two very good less technical readings are The Infamous Boundary: Seven Decades of Controversy in Quartum Physics by David Wick and another I’ll have to look for in my library at home. A detailed philosophical account is given in Quantum Chance and Non-locality by Michael Dickson. There are lots more sources. Famous arthors on the subject include Cushing, Redhead, and Dickson.
Phil
Super! Thanks for the list.
Dickson’s sounds the most intriguing. I’ll add it to my summer reading list.
This new experimental result if confirmed elsewhere and proved to be true, will add more fuel to the current controversy regarding the formulation and interpretation of Bell’s theorem. Joy Christian of Oxford and many others argue that Bell’s theorem and its experimental designs breaks down with Clifford algebra and hence does not prove anything.This adds more weight to Einstein’s opinion that Quantum Mechanics is incomplete and should be replaced by a more logically rigorous theory.