Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in non-relativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, in a physical system such as an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in non-relativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, in a physical system such as an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in nonrelativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave, or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. It is not an element of physics. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, for an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.
The difficulties of the old quantum theory were largely dispelled by the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. First Heisenberg (1925) developed the rather abstract matrix mechanics and soon after Schro¨dinger (1926; see also Eckart, 1926) developed the physically more appealing wave mechanics. Subsequently he showed them to be mathematically equivalent. The physicists were greatly relieved; now they had once again a mathematical formalism that enabled the results of experiments to be calculated. It was possible to move forward. It is certainly a very elegant and indeed beautiful formalism, and does enable the results of many physical measurements to be calculated with great accuracy. It is used daily by atomic and nuclear physicists; there is no other way to make calculations. From the earliest days there has been intense debate about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it shows no signs of being settled; if anything it is becoming more intense over the years. As Penrose has remarked, no one understands quantum mechanics. Feynman (1967; see also Sykes, 1994) also admitted that ‘nobody understands quantum mechanics’, and Einstein once remarked: ‘I have thought a hundred times as much about the quantum problems as I have about general relativity theory’ (Pais, 1994, p. 57). It should therefore be evident that the most that can be done here is to try to show where the real difficulties lie, and how the failure to recognize that quantum mechanics is an essentially statistical theory has led to a series of confusing quantum paradoxes. It is just these paradoxes that have often been used to support theological speculations. It is useful to ask what ‘understanding quantum mechanics’ actually means. Certainly it means being able to calculate the results of many measurements. The same applies to Newton’s theory of gravitation, which we understand in the sense that we can use it as a basis of calculation, although we do not really understand the gravitational force itself. Very often, especially in modern physics, the mathematical formalism does not give us the sort of intuitive physical feeling for what is going on that we often obtain from classical mechanics. Perhaps we can never achieve more than this for quantum mechanics. In classical mechanics we can assume that a property that is measured objectively exists prior to the interaction of the measuring apparatus with the observed system. Quantum mechanics, however, ‘is incompatible with the proposition that measurement discovers some unknown but pre-existing property’ (Peres, 1997, p. 14). There is an important distinction between mysteries and absurdities. We may be forced to live with mysteries, but there is no reason why we should put up with absurdities such as the wave-particle duality, tunnelling through potential barriers, acausal events and the collapse of the wave function. These are the quantum paradoxes that will be discussed later on. They arise within the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and are solved by other interpretations. These alternative interpretations enable us to make conjectures about what is going on, even though we cannot understand it in detail. This is acceptable and a stimulus to further research. It is certainly difficult enough to understand quantum mechanics, but there is no need to try to visualize logical absurdities in the effort to do so. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical formalism that makes it possible to calculate the results of some experiments. Anything more than this, such as questions about the interpretation of what is measured and whether it tells us what is actually going on in the system being studied, belongs to philosophy. Thus we are concerned here with what is essentially a philosophical debate; if it were just a matter of physics the debate would have been settled long ago. One of the difficulties is that it invokes the results of experiments and uses the language of quantum mechanics. Inevitably this language uses philosophical terms and then it is easy to give the impression that the philosophical propositions are in some way entailed by the physical results. These in turn can influence theological thinking. In order to be quite clear which arguments are justified and which are not, it is essential to separate the three levels of discourse: physical, philosophical and theological. Our task is to relate these together, and this immediately raises the traditional problems of the philosophy of science, including the relation of experiment to theory, and of theory to explanation. We begin by discussing experiments, distinguishing between those that are real and those that are imaginary.
Quantum mechanics is our most successful physical theory. It predicts the behavior of atoms, molecules, and light to ten decimal places. No experiment has ever contradicted it. It also contains a crack at its foundation. The theory’s central equation—the Schrodinger equation—describes a smooth, continuous, perfectly predictable evolution of the quantum state. But whenever anyone performs a measurement, they get a single, definite result. Which result they get appears to be random. The transition from smooth evolution to random outcome is called the “collapse of the wavefunction,” and after nearly a century of analysis, there is no agreed-upon explanation for what causes it, when it occurs, or whether it occurs at all. This is the measurement problem. The measurement problem is not a minor puzzle at the margins of the theory. It is a failure to explain the most basic operation in science: looking at the result of an experiment. Around it cluster other puzzles. Light behaves like a wave in some experiments and like a particle in others—two contradictory descriptions. Two particles that have interacted remain correlated across arbitrary distances, as though communicating faster than light. The probabilities that govern measurement outcomes appear as a postulate—the Born rule—inserted by hand with no deeper justification. And the theory offers no unified picture of reality: quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the standard model of particle physics speak incompatible mathematical languages. A century of effort has produced many interpretations of quantum mechanics. Copenhagen. Many-worlds. De Broglie-Bohm. Objective collapse. Quantum Bayesianism. None has achieved consensus. The measurement problem remains. This document proposes that the source of these puzzles is not quantum mechanics itself. It is a single, invisible assumption made at the very beginning of the theory in 1900—an assumption so deeply embedded that nobody noticed they were making it. Change that assumption, and the puzzles do not get solved. They dissolve. They stop being puzzles. They become predictable consequences of geometry.
Hugh Everett’s “Relative State” model [1] of the observing element in quantum theory is expanded in the Event Oriented World View [2] and used to show how inertial interactions suggested by “Mach’s Principle” can resolve the wave particle duality. I argue that bullet like Photons are not ontologically real but have been introduced as interpretation aids for experiments based upon an outdated concept of the observing mechanisms in such observers. However denying the reality of photons is only one consequence of a more fundamental shift from object to event oriented physical theories. I will show how adopting the concept that all systems are observers and providing an event model for those observers, will give quantum theory a paradox free ontological context. This context can, for example, provide an ontological explanation for the apparent random hits of individual matter-radiation interactions in the dual slit experiment. Almost a century of attempts to find an acceptable interpretation for quantum theory have failed because mere interpretations do not go far enough. Namely they do not treat the physical observer and his observations as incorporated into a single event. Event oriented physics suggests an observer is an activity cycle and Hilbert Space is a set of actual detector/actuator arrays, through which all knowledge is obtained. These arrays separate physical reality from the display of observable measurement results, inside such observing activities. By assuming arrays are fundamentally describable as mass and charge densities, gravity and electricity are coupled together by internal material forces between mass and charge. Electromagnetic influences can only change the dynamic state of an observing activity when charge-mass forces produce compensating changes in the gravito-inertial field. Gravito-inertial field fluctuations limit the ability of an atom to make a transition that exactly matches the energy available in a stimulating electric field. Thus the propensity of photon absorption is determined by the field intensity but the actual transition is determined by quasirandom gravito-inertial fluctuations. Disturbances in the electromagnetic-field propagates as waves, but are observed as well localized phenomena falsely suggesting particles exist in the field.
Quantum mechanics represents one of the great conceptual revolu- tions of the 20th century. It has raised a huge number of fundamental questions of both physical and philosophical kind. • What does matter mean at all? • What are the main properties or characteristics of matter? • Can matter be reduced to information? • Is our universe probabilistic at the most fundamental level? • Are there non-local correlations in nature? • Are non-causal interconnections between physical systems possible?
The Quantum theory deals with the microscopic structure of the Universe that describes the finer details of nature at the subatomic domain.To a physicist, quantum mechanics is one of the three great pillars supporting our intuition of evocative, bewildering and fascinating natural World as we continuously struggle with the inescapable strangeness of the subatomic domain as if something strange is always afoot.It is well accepted fact that quantum mechanics is a physical theory that describes the way things behave at subatomic level which is quite dazzling in its precision and explanatory power.A test of quantum electrodynamics, the oldest and best understood of the modern quantum theory that involves measuring the way an electron behaves in the vicinity of a magnetic force. Many of the technological and social changes that have revolutionized our lives have actually risen out of the fundamental theoretical research carried out with only motivation to understand the World in a better way than ever. For example, the invention of transistor actually came with the fundamental theoretical research on the Uncertainty Principle which states that the uncertainty of the position of a particle times the uncertainty of its velocity is always a constant. If we double the certainty of the position of the particle, we have to make half the certainty of its velocity and vice versa. Quantum theory is perhaps the prime example of the infinitely esoteric in the sense that it describes a World in which a particle really can be in several places at once and it moves from one place to another by exploring the entire Universe simultaneously-the theory of simultaneity. The diverse and complex Universe is actually made of a few tiny particles according to the rules of quantum theory which is so simple that can be summarized on the back of an envelope. The more we understand about the elemental nature of the Universe, the simpler it looks. We have already discovered that everything in the diverse and complex Universe is nothing but the different assemblies of atoms, and the wide variety of atoms are constructed using the three building blocks at the sub-atomic domain i.e. subatomic particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. We have also discovered that protons and neutrons ate made up of combination of three entities called quarks. And that is where things stop as far as recent discovery is concerned. But the recent progress in particle physics inspiring the quest for the ultimate unified theory of physics that can describe everything in the Universe in one go. The discovery of Boson particle certainty will revolutionaries the Newton's mass concept and gravity into whole new looks. To an optimistic point of view, we must hope the best out of the progress in physics.