What Does Quantum Theory Actually Tell Us about Reality?

Christoph Adami, Nicolas J. Cerf

Oreste Piccioni, Werner A. W. Mehlhop

Steven E. Kaufman

In this article, physical reality as a whole is defined, thereby revealing the actual nature of physical reality to be that of a boundary created by a relation, as that boundary is apprehended from one side of the relation that brings it into existence. The reason we can’t pin down a specific physical reality, i.e., completely define any physical reality, is because in doing so we are trying to pin down what is effectively a miniature rainbow, trying to pin down that which is actually only the product of a relation, trying to pin down something that, in the final analysis, is not at all or in any way what is actually there, but only seems to be what is actually there. However, while we cannot ever pin down any specific physical reality for the reasons mentioned above, we can pin down the nature of physical reality as a whole. We cannot get to the end of a rainbow, because rainbows only appear to have an end. However, we can understand the true nature of the rainbow and understand how it is created and why it appears as it does. In the same way, although we cannot pin down any specific physical reality, we can understand the nature of physical reality as a whole, how physical reality is created and why physical reality appears as it does, if we are able to understand what it is that the phenomena of wave-particle duality and uncertainty are actually telling us about the nature of physical reality.

Alain Aspect, Trevor W. Marshall, Emilio Santos +10 more

Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

Ever since quantum mechanics was first developed, it has been unclear what it really tells us about reality. A novel framework, based on 5 axioms, is presented here which offers an interpretation of quantum mechanics unlike any considered thus far: It is postulated that physical objects can exist in one of two distinct modes, based on whether they have an intrinsic actual spacetime history or not. If they do, their mode of existence is actual and they can be described by classical physics. If they do not, then their mode of existence is called actualizable and they must be described in terms of an equal-weight superposition of all possible actualizable (not actual) histories. The distinction is based on an axiom according to which there exists a limit in which spacetime reduces to a one-dimension reduced version, called areatime, and that objects which merely actualizably exist in spacetime actually exist in areatime. The operational comparison of the passage of time for such objects to the passage of time for a spacetime observer is postulated to be made possible by what is called an angular dual bilateral symmetry. This symmetry can be decomposed into the superposition of two imaginary phase angles of opposite sign. To mathematically describe the spacetime manifestation of objects which actually exist in areatime, each actualizable spacetime history is associated with an