Related papers: The unspeakable why
I will propose that the reality to which the quantum formalism implicitly refers is a kind of generalized history, the word history having here the same meaning as in the phrase sum-over-histories. This proposal confers a certain…
We offer a critical assessment of some generic features of various of the current approaches towards the construction of a Theory of Quantum Gravity. We will argue that there is a need for further conceptual clarifications before such an…
Quantum field theory offers physicists a tremendously wide range of application; it is both a language with which a vast variety of physical processes can be discussed and also it provides a model for fundamental physics, the so-called…
Old and new puzzles of cosmology are reexamined from the point of view of quantum theory of the universe developed here. It is shown that in proposed approach the difficulties of the standard cosmology do not arise. The theory predicts the…
There exist dozens of interpretations of quantum theory, but they do not seem to contribute much to understanding the theory. This paper attempts to clarify some issues that are discussed in those interpretations. The main keywords are:…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
Quantum physics, which describes the strange behavior of light and matter at the smallest scales, is one of the most successful descriptions of reality, yet it is notoriously inaccessible. Here we provide an approachable explanation of…
Three major misconceptions concerning quantized tachyon fields: the energy spectrum unbounded from below, the frame-dependent and unstable vacuum state, and the non-covariant commutation rules, are shown to be a result of misrepresenting…
While its applications have made quantum theory arguably the most successful theory in physics, its interpretation continues to be the subject of lively debate within the community of physicists and philosophers concerned with conceptual…
Feynman famously asserted that interference is the only real mystery in quantum mechanics (QM). It is concluded that the reason for this mystery, and thereby the related mysteries of complementarity, non-commutativity of observables, the…
Quantum mechanics, in its orthodox version, imposes severe limits on what can be known, or even said, about the condition of a quantum system between two observations. A relatively new approach, based on so-called "weak measurements",…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
Quantum theory is formulated as the only consistent way to manipulate probability amplitudes. The crucial ingredient is a consistency constraint: if there are two different ways to compute an amplitude the two answers must agree. This…
It is shown that the basic equations of quantum theory can be obtained from a straightforward application of logical inference to experiments for which there is uncertainty about individual events and for which the frequencies of the…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
"Ever since the advent of modern quantum mechanics in the late 1920's, the idea has been prevalent that the classical laws of probability cease, in some sense, to be valid in the new theory. [...] The primary object of this presentation is…
Several new physics experiments in 1998 were performed and analyzed to show the subtlety of quantum theory, including the "wave-particle duality" and the non-separability of two-particle entangled state. Here it is shown that the…
At the primary level of reality as described by quantum field theory, a fundamental particle like an electron represents a stable, discrete, propagating excited state of its underlying quantum field. QFT also tells us that the lowest vacuum…
Richard Feynman famously declared, "I think that I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics." Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't…