Are We Real? And Other Questions of Physics

P. A. M. Dirac

Amanda Gefter

Ophir Mottes

Cook, Daniel Reed

Why Copenhagen? Why did we physicists of Earth choose to create the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics during the wild days of the 1920’s? And why did most of us scientists continue to believe in it for nearly a whole century afterwards? Why would we actually do such a thing to ourselves? Did we have any other alternatives? Do any of the other interpretations of quantum physics make any more sense? Why would anyone want to discover a “correct” interpretation? Why do some of us still seek for a “complete” interpretation? Is quantum physics a real physical thing, that can be physically studied, in a real physical laboratory? Or is quantum physics just a mathematical statistical probabilistic thing, that can only be contemplated intellectually inside our human brains? This brief article attempts to ask some of these important questions, in the hope that it might further encourage others to continue to ask their wise scientific questions, and even to start asking much better questions, until that bright joyful day finally arrives, when we scientists of Earth, can all wisely agree together on the very best answers.

Rajendra Prasad, Bernard d’Espagnat, Dugald R. Murdoch

Dominique-Marie Cabaret, T. Grandou, Perrier, E.

Both at formal and philosophical levels, decades of efforts have been devoted to a deciphering of the `quantum enigma', the `crazy way quantum objects behave', to quote R.P. Feynman's words. We posit that the enigma cannot recede without resorting to a thorough questioning of the quantum ontology. In the current paper this questioning is introduced through a revisitation of the famous Schrödinger's cat paradox, and of the main attempts at solving it. Our proposal thereof, is that the quantum world enjoys a sound physical reality (complying, in particular, with the scientifc requirement of experimental reproducibility), but also, that this physical reality calls for an enlarged, and however precise notion of `what is real', such that what is real and actual can be distinguished from what is real but potential