Seven Steps Towards the Classical World

Valia Allori, Detlef D uuml rr, Shelly Goldstein +1 more

Classical physics is about real objects, like apples falling from trees, whose motion is governed by Newtonian laws. In standard quantum mechanics only the wavefunctions or the results of measurements exist, and to answer the question of how the classical world can be part of the quantum world is a rather formidable task. However, this is not the case for Bohmian mechanics which, like classical mechanics, is a theory about real objects. In Bohmian terms, the problem of the classical limit becomes very simple: when do the Bohmian trajectories look Newtonian?

Anu Venugopalan

Valia Allori

Quantum mechanics is the most powerful of the theories developed by the human beings. In fact, it is able to predict successfully the experimental results with an impressive degree of accuracy. For this reason, the majority of physicists tends to believe that quantum mechanics has no problem and that we are close to finding a real ”theory of everything”. As it has been underlined many times, starting from the famous Bohr–Einstein debate and finally arriving at the writing of John Bell, it is far from being true.

D. Greene

Having been retired for about 12 years, I have had more time to think about virtual physics than the recently retired David Brown (May p80). I would suggest that the subject could develop at something like seven levels of increasing virtuality.