quantum interpretations – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 ‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality https://www.quantamagazine.org/metaphysical-experiments-test-hidden-assumptions-about-reality-20240730/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/metaphysical-experiments-test-hidden-assumptions-about-reality-20240730/#respond Tue, 30 Jul 2024 14:40:10 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139377 The post ‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals in the deep scaffolding of the world: the nature of space, time, causation and existence, the foundations of reality itself. It’s generally considered untestable, since metaphysical assumptions underlie all our efforts to conduct tests and interpret results. Those assumptions usually go unspoken. Most of the time, that’s fine.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/metaphysical-experiments-test-hidden-assumptions-about-reality-20240730/feed/ 0 Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Quantum Weirdness https://www.quantamagazine.org/physics-experiments-spell-doom-for-quantum-collapse-theory-20221020/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/physics-experiments-spell-doom-for-quantum-collapse-theory-20221020/#respond Thu, 20 Oct 2022 14:20:53 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=119930 The post Experiments Spell Doom for Decades-Old Explanation of Quantum Weirdness first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> How does objective reality emerge from the palette of possibilities supplied by quantum mechanics? That question — the deepest and most vexed issue posed by the theory — is still the subject of arguments a century old. Possible explanations for how observations of the world yield definite, “classical” results, drawing on different interpretations of what quantum mechanics means...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/physics-experiments-spell-doom-for-quantum-collapse-theory-20221020/feed/ 0 How Big Can the Quantum World Be? Physicists Probe the Limits. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-can-the-quantum-world-be-physicists-probe-the-limits-20210818/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-can-the-quantum-world-be-physicists-probe-the-limits-20210818/#respond Wed, 18 Aug 2021 06:20:55 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=107941 The post How Big Can the Quantum World Be? Physicists Probe the Limits. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> It’s a mere speck of matter — a piece of silica crystal no bigger than a virus, levitated in a light beam. But it is almost as motionless as the laws of physics permit. Two teams of researchers, in Austria and Switzerland, have independently succeeded in freezing such minuscule nanoparticles, just 100 to 140 nanometers across, almost entirely into their lowest-energy quantum state...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-can-the-quantum-world-be-physicists-probe-the-limits-20210818/feed/ 0 A New Theorem Maps Out the Limits of Quantum Physics https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theorem-maps-out-the-limits-of-quantum-physics-20201203/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theorem-maps-out-the-limits-of-quantum-physics-20201203/#respond Thu, 03 Dec 2020 15:09:37 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=96918 The post A New Theorem Maps Out the Limits of Quantum Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> The founders of quantum mechanics understood it to be deeply, profoundly weird. Albert Einstein, for one, went to his grave convinced that the theory had to be just a steppingstone to a more complete description of nature, one that would do away with the disturbing quirks of the quantum. Then in 1964, John Stewart Bell proved a theorem that would test whether quantum theory was obscuring a full...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theorem-maps-out-the-limits-of-quantum-physics-20201203/feed/ 0 Where Quantum Probability Comes From https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-quantum-probability-comes-from-20190909/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-quantum-probability-comes-from-20190909/#respond Mon, 09 Sep 2019 15:00:44 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=75659 The post Where Quantum Probability Comes From first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, published in 1814, Pierre-Simon Laplace introduced a notorious hypothetical creature: a “vast intelligence” that knew the complete physical state of the present universe. For such an entity, dubbed “Laplace’s demon” by subsequent commentators, there would be no mystery about what had happened in the past or what would happen at any time in the future.

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