Related papers: The Gibbs Paradox Revisited
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
For a thought experiment concerning the mixing of two classical gases, Gibbs concluded that the work that can be extracted from mixing is determined by whether or not the gases can be distinguished by a semi-permeable membrane; that is, the…
The gap between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics has an important interpretive implication: the Universe must have an irreducible fundamental level, which determines the properties of matter at higher levels of organization. We…
Bohmian mechanics solves the wave-particle duality paradox by introducing the concept of a physical particle that is always point-like and a separate wavefunction with some sort of physical reality. However, this model has not been…
An axiomatics for indistinguishability of elementary particles in terms of hidden variables is presented in a manner which depart from the standard approaches usually given to hidden variables. Quantum distribution functions are also…
The analysis of the arguments within the limits of the classical thermodynamics that lead to the Gibbs paradox was made. Features of preconditions used in the derivation of the entropy of mixing of ideal gases that caused the appearance of…
We consider a toy model of the interaction of a qubit with an exotic space-time containing a time-like curve. Consistency seems to require that the global evolution of the qubit be non-unitary. Given that quantum mechanics is globally…
Quantum particles and classical particles are described in a common setting of classical statistical physics. The property of a particle being "classical" or "quantum" ceases to be a basic conceptual difference. The dynamics differs,…
We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so…
We examine a recent argument that ``identical'' quantum particles with an anti-symmetric state (fermions) are weakly discernible objects, just like irreflexively related ordinary objects in situations with perfect symmetry (Black's spheres,…
Wave-particle duality is one of the fundamental properties of matter and at the same time, one of the mysteries of modern physics. In this paper, we propose and analyze a new interpretation of the wave-particle duality, and propose a new…
In this article we argue that in quantum mechanics, and in opposition to classical physics, it is impossible to say that an isolated quantum system "owns" a physical property. Some properties of the system, its mass for example, belong to…
The main distinction between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is the lack in the latter of a full mechanical determinism: different final states can arise from the same physical state, after the measurement. No hidden variable is…
Quantum experiments detect particles, but they reveal information about wave properties. No matter how quanta are detected, they always express the local net state of the corresponding wave-function. The mechanism behind this process is…
The problem of the determinism of Quantum Mechanics has been a main one during the 20th century. At the same time, in the context of Logic and Set Theory, the importance of ancient paradoxes as well as the appearance of many new ones, has…
We discuss our understanding of the equivalence principle in both classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. We show that not only does the equivalence principle hold for the trajectories of quantum particles in a background gravitational…
The empirical rule that systems of identical particles always obey either Bose or Fermi statistics is customarily imposed on the theory by adding it to the axioms of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, with the result that other statistical…
A type of mechanics will be presented that possesses some distinctive properties. On the one hand, its physical description & rules of operation are readily comprehensible & intuitively clear. On the other, it fully satisfies all observable…
Quantum mechanics is widely regarded as a complete theory, yet we argue it is a tractable projection of a deeper, computationally-inaccessible classical variational structure. By analyzing the coupled partial differential equations of the…
The basic premise of Quantum Mechanics, embodied in the doctrine of wave-particle duality, assigns both, a particle and a wave structure to the physical entities. The classical laws describing the motion of a particle and the evolution of a…