Related papers: A retrodiction paradox in quantum and classical op…
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox was presented as an argument that quantum mechanics is an incomplete description of physical reality. However, the premises on which the argument is based are falsifiable by Bell experiments. In…
The extravagances of quantum mechanics never fail to enrich daily the debate around natural philosophy. Entanglement, non-locality, collapse, many worlds, many minds, and subjectivism have challenged generations of thinkers. Its approach…
The density matrix yields probabilistic information about the outcome of measurements on a quantum system, but it does not distinguish between classical randomness in the preparation of the system and entanglement with its environment.…
We reconsider some important foundational problems of quantum mechanics. After reviewing the measurement problem and discussing its unavoidability, we analyze some proposals to overcome it. This analysis leads us to reconsider the current…
The paradoxes of thermodynamics and statistical physics are unavoidable in the study of physical paradoxes because of their importance at the time they came to be as well as the frequency of their appearance in historical studies of…
We propose a solution to the quantum measurement paradox by first identifying its classical counterpart.
When one takes into account gravitation, the measurement of space and time cannot be carried out with infinite accuracy. When quantum mechanics is reformulated taking into account this lack of accuracy, the resolution of the measurement…
In an apparently unexplored region of relativistic spacetime, a simple thought experiment demonstrates that conjoined Lorentz transformations predict a proper clock at rest will run backwards and that prediction violates the logical…
Physical interpretations of the time-symmetric formulation of quantum mechanics, due to Aharonov, Bergmann, and Lebowitz are discussed in terms of weak values. The most direct, yet somewhat naive, interpretation uses the time-symmetric…
We introduce a quantum mechanical model of time travel which includes two figurative beam splitters in order to induce feedback to earlier times. This leads to a unique solution to the paradox where one could kill one's grandfather in that…
We suggest a somewhat non-standard view on a set of curious, paradoxical from the standpoint of simple classical physics and everyday experience phenomena. There are the quantisation (discrete set of values) of the observables (e.g.,…
Quantum backflow refers to the counterintuitive fact that the probability can flow in the direction opposite to the momentum of a quantum particle. This phenomenon has been seen to be small and fragile for one-dimensional systems, in which…
The Gibbs paradox has frequently been interpreted as a sign that particles of the same kind are fundamentally indistinguishable; and that quantum mechanics, with its identical fermions and bosons, is indispensable for making sense of this.…
Since its emergence, quantum mechanics has been a challenge for an understanding of reality which is based on our intuition in a classical world. Nevertheless, it has often been tried to impose this understanding of reality on quantum…
An ultimate universal theory -- a complete theory that accounts, via few and simple first principles, for all the phenomena already observed and that will ever be observed -- has been, and still is, the aspiration of most physicists and…
Quantum mechanics led to spectacular technological developments, discovery of new constituents of matter and new materials. However there is still no consensus on its interpretation and limitations. Some scientists and scientific writers…
For decades, researchers have sought to understand how the irreversibility of the surrounding world emerges from the seemingly time symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. Quantum mechanics conjectured a clue that final irreversibility is…
Although the laws of classical physics are deterministic, thermodynamics gives rise to an arrow of time through irreversible processes. In quantum mechanics the unitary nature of the time evolution makes it intrinsically reversible, however…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…