The essence of reality

L Montejo

Erwin Schrödinger’s cat was never meant as a celebration of quantum mechanics, but as a warning. His intent was not to defend his equation but to highlight its weakness when applied to lived reality. The paradox revealed a fracture: the mathematics of the wavefunction described possibilities, while our world presents single, irreversible outcomes. Copenhagen resolved the tension by fiat, declaring collapse without mechanism. Everett later declared the wavefunction itself as reality, clean and unitary, where every outcome persists. Both maneuvers avoided the cost of recording. Landauer’s principle restores it: to register one outcome rather than another requires energy. Decoherence without dissipation is essence. Decoherence with dissipation is the beginning of existence. The distinction is the same as between a reversible calculation and one that leaves heat behind: only the latter produces an irreversible record. Physics, if it seeks to describe reality rather than essence, must account for this toll.

Pieter Kok

John M. Koller

Elio Conte, Andrei Yu. Khrennikov, Joseph P. Zbilut

It is given a preliminary discussion on the ontic nature of quantum states to be intended as potentialities and on the central role of spin to be considered as the basic essence of quantum mechanical reality. The possible fundamental role of potentialities and of spin is evidenced in the framework of physical as well as of biological reality. After such preliminary deepening, using a quantum like scheme delineated on the basis of an algebraic structure, it is given for the first time mathematical demonstration of the transition from potentiality of states to their actualization as basic mechanism of our reality.

Richard J. Morris

Guido Bacciagaluppi, Elise Crull

This is a reprinting of Bohr’s note to Nature advertising his forthcoming response to the EPR paper. It is very brief but contains in essence the argumentative tack Bohr would in fact employ in his full response to EPR.