Friar Bellows

Hidden variables haven't been proven false. Only local hidden variables theories are impossible. Non-local ones are still possible.

Nowhere357

The refridgerator light goes out when I close the door. I don't find that hard to say, at all!

NumberTenOx

I stand corrected! This warrants further investigation. One article I found discusses de Broglie-Bohm theory and an experimental case contradicting it, although other non-local theories are apparently still possible...

Reality is stranger than fiction... or is it?

Peter Soderqvist

TO TOM SAWYER

Soderqvist1: Yes it is known as probability distribution of Eigenstates!
Since everything in the quantum world is uncertain, we can only estimate the probable outcome of a measurement, where the quantum object can be found! Where the Eigenstate is as highest, there is the highest probability to find the electron too, and vice versa! The wave equation can be written down with either Heisenberg 's wave matrix, or Schrodinger 's wave mechanics!

Soderqvist1: I think "they" mean the phenomenon known as quantum jumps!

Soderqvist1: certainty doesn't exist in the quantum world!
Not only does our measurement disturb the electron when we probe the quantum world with an electron microscope, since we hit the electron with photons, and thus disturb the electron, just as billiards players use the 8 balls in billiards to hit the black cue ball. We know thus the electrons position, but doesn't know anything about where the electron is going afterward????

Soderqvist1: The heat movement causes ice to melt, and if every effect has a cause, what causes radio isotopic decay? It appears to me that macroscopic phenomena are determined by cause and effect, but sub-microscopic phenomena are fundamentally acausal! Take the Bohr atom as illustration, the more we know about an electron's momentum the less we know about its position, and vise versa! An electron orbiting the atom in a standing wave of probability distribution of Eigenstates, when this electron emits energy of quanta, and thus jumping down to a lower energy level, the electron doesn't exists between these two orbits, or levels, hence we know about two positions, the higher, and the lower energy levels, or orbits, but we doesn't know about its momentum between these levels, because the electron doesn't exist there! Experiments later than Aspects' has been made in order to pin down the electron's momentum and position in a closed box, but the electron begins to bounces like crazy more, and more as the space decreases. That confirms that Heisenberg 's uncertainty principle is intrinsic in the quantum world!

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene Chap 4: Microscopic Weirdness
If an electron is confined to a space of decreasing size, its motion (momentum) increases wildly due to "quantum claustrophobia"
http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/elegantuniverse.html

Soderqvist1: To use common sense in the quantum world is definitely the wrong place to do so, Take a look here what the founding fathers of quantum mechanics have to say about it!

Quotations by Max Planck: If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

Quotations by Niels Bohr: Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

Quotations by Erwin Schrodinger: [On quantum mechanics] I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.

Quotations by Werner Heisenberg: Since my talks with Bohr often continued till long after midnight and did not produce a satisfactory conclusion, both of us became utterly exhausted and rather tense. Thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely. The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it. I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.
http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08c.htm

Reference to some quotations
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~...eisenberg.html

Soderqvist1: our common sense stems from our everyday living, therefore "quantum weirdness" transcends our notion of reality! :banghead:

Friar Bellows

Thanks for the reference. H.D. Zeh, who is an expert in QM says this about it:

See: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210098

(BTW, you should always link to the abstract...

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206196

...rather than the full article)

Reality is far more fascinating than fiction. Broadly speaking, fiction only shows up our lack of imagination.