Re: Quantum mystics

On 10/06/2024 15:45, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 6/10/24 01:56, john larkin wrote:
[...]

>
The split-beam interferometer was designed specifically to mess with
our heads.

 Was it? I think it behaves exacly like you'd expect from
a wave phenomenon observed with quantized detectors.

But the wave phenomena in some experiments (aka wavefunction) can belong to comparatively heavy objects that we would normally think of as classical particles. Indeed we can even image the molecules used at atomic level with scanning tunnelling microscopes.
I'm pretty sure they have diffracted buckyballs through Young's slits. I think the record for complexity is still held by a fluorinated porphyrin ~10k amu 800+ atoms and efforts are underway to diffract a small virus.
More info on Arxiv here : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.8343
Experimentally it is quite a tour de force!
Physical intuition tends to break down when you have a superposition of quantum states involved. Attempting to know which slit a particle actually went through destroys the interference pattern and experiments using ultra low flux levels with just a single photon in at any one time still show a diffraction pattern. QM is decidedly counter intuitive.
Explores all available paths mathematics gets the right results but I can't help feeling that there is a way to avoid the action at a distance implied by quantum entanglement when we get all of the physics correct.
I didn't think his talk was all that outrageous. A bit over simplified perhaps but then avoiding almost all of the maths that is inevitable.
--
Martin Brown