Related papers: Does the wavefunction of the universe exist?
The spectacular successes of quantum physics have made it a commonplace to assert that we live in a quantum world. This idea seems to imply a kind of "quantum fundamentalism" according to which everything in the universe (if not the…
Some connections between quantum mechanics and classical physics are explored. The Planck-Einstein and De Broglie relations, the wavefunction and its probabilistic interpretation, the Canonical Commutation Relations and the Maxwell--Lorentz…
The measurement problem is the issue of explaining how the objective classical world emerges from a quantum one. Here we take a different approach. We assume that there is an objective classical system, and then ask that the standard rules…
Quantum Mechanics (QM) is a quantum probability theory based on the density matrix. The possibility of applying classical probability theory, which is based on the probability distribution function(PDF), to describe quantum systems is…
The nonrelativistic wavefunction of a quantum state that contains all its information is derived directly from the effective quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics, which are the fundamental elements of reality of the…
The conceptual problems in quantum mechanics -- related to the collapse of the wave function, the particle-wave duality, the meaning of measurement -- arise from the need to ascribe particle character to the wave function. As will be shown,…
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…
The speculation that gravity is the key to solving the quantum measurement problem has been alive for decades, without any convincing demonstration of a solution. One necessary factor in the relevant proposals is that the gravitational…
The main argument by proponents of Many-World interpretations of quantum mechanics is that as more and more previously disentangled degrees of freedom become entangled with the microscopic degree we measure, there is no way of telling when…
In an open Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) space background, we study the classical and quantum cosmological models in the framework of the recently proposed nonlinear massive gravity theory. Although the constraints which are present in…
We apply the complex de Broglie-Bohm formulation of quantum mechanics [1] to a spatially closed homogeneous and isotropic early Universe whose matter content are radiation and dust perfect fluids. We then show that an expanding classical…
Among several possibilities for what reality could be like in view of the empirical facts of quantum mechanics, one is provided by theories of spontaneous wave function collapse, the best known of which is the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW)…
In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of…
Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying…
Some Christian apologists, notably William Lane Craig, have championed something called the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. One version of the argument leans heavily on the claim that the existence of an actual…
A century after the discovery of quantum mechanics, the meaning of quantum mechanics still remains elusive. This is largely due to the puzzling nature of the wave function, the central object in quantum mechanics. If we are realists about…
The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI) states that the world we live in is just one among many parallel worlds. It is widely believed that because of this commitment to parallel worlds, the MWI violates common sense. Some…
Since the 1970s, the Everett-Wheeler many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Mechanics (1955) has been much in the news. One wonders about the worlds in question, their branches, their splittings, their number. It is most often ignored…
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…
All our statements about the physical world are expressed in terms of everyday notions and thus in terms of classical physics. This necessity is behind each of our attempt to extract meaning out of empirical data and to communicate this…