Journal of Modern Physics

Quantum Mysteries for No One

Frank Lad

Published Jan 1, 2021• 3 citations

Abstract

I provide a critical reassessment of David Mermin’s influential and misleading parable, “Quantum Mysteries for Anyone”, identifying its errors and resolving them with a complete analysis of the quantum experiment it is meant to portray. Accessible to popular readership and requiring no knowledge of quantum physics at all, his exposition describes the curious behaviour of a machine that is designed to parody the empirical results of quantum experiments monitoring the spins of a pair of electrons under various conditions. The mysteries are said to unfold from contradictory results produced by a signal process that is proposed to explain them. I find that these results derive from a mathematical error of neglect, coupled with a confusion of two distinct types of experiments under consideration. One of these, a gedankenexperiment, provides the context in which the fabled defiance of Bell’s inequality is thought to emerge. The errors are corrected by the recognition of functional relations embedded within the experimental conditions that have been long unnoticed. A Monte Carlo simulation of results in accord with the actual abstemious claims of quantum theory supports probability values that Mermin decries as unwarranted. However, the distribution it suggests is not definitive, in accord with the expressed agnostic position of quantum theory regarding measurements that cannot be executed. Bounding quantum probabilities are computed for the results of the gedankenexperiment relevant to Bell’s inequality which inspired the parable. The problem is embedded in a 3 × 3 design of Stern-Gerlach magnet orientations at two observation stations. Computational resolution on the basis of Bruno de Finetti’s fundamental theorem of probability requires the evaluation of a battery of three paired linear programming problems. Though technicalities are ornate, the message is clear. There are no mysteries of quantum mechanics that derive from mistaken understandings of Bell’s inequality… for anyone.

DOI: 10.4236/jmp.2021.129082

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A 40, 1133 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.40.1133 Experimentally, that transition has been observed to agree with theory in Rydberg atoms55. M. Nauenberg, C. Stroud, J. Yeazell, Sci. Am., June 1994, p. 44. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0694-44 for n = 100, τ = 152 picoseconds, and nothing shifty about this classical–quantum correspondence is found. For planetary orbits, however, n is of order 1070, and therefore the answer to Albert Einstein’s often repeated remark “Is the moon there when nobody looks?” (see David Mermin, Physics Today, April 1985, page 38) is yes.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<1. J. S. Bell, M. Nauenberg, in Preludes in Theoretical Physics, A. de Shalit, H. Feshbach, L. van Hove, eds., North Holland, Amsterdam (1966), p. 270; Google Scholarreprinted in J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1987), p. 24. Google Scholar2. R. P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton, M. Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 3, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA (1989), p. 3–7. Google Scholar3. M. Born, Dan. Mat. Fys. Medd. 30 (2), 1 (1955). Google Scholar4. M. Nauenberg, Phys. Rev. A 40, 1133 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.40.1133, Google ScholarCrossref, CAS5. M. Nauenberg, C. Stroud, J. Yeazell, Sci. Am., June 1994, p. 44. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0694-44, Google ScholarCrossref© 2012 American Institute of Physics.

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