EPR/Bohm/Bell & Localism vs Universalism

[glengarry]

Standard QM is only an indirect theory of physical reality.

I think arguments like that would hold more water if you could actually get people to agree what 'reality' is. Philosophers have been arguing that one since time immemorial with zero agreement.

Only God knows what the underlying reality of the universe consists of, but I will say that theories that attempt to directly model reality make use of differential equations that operate over continuous manifolds/fields. Things like "action at a distance", "quantum jumps", and other types of discontinuity are not allowed in these kinds of models. The goal is to try to develop deeply intelligible notions of causation rather than relying upon the "crutch of abstraction" inherent in theories that are based on the Born's statistical interpretation of the wavefunction.

 

[bhobba]

Only God knows what the underlying reality of the universe consists of, but I will say that theories that attempt to directly model reality make use of differential equations that operate over continuous manifolds/fields. Things like "action at a distance", "quantum jumps", and other types of discontinuity are not allowed in these kinds of models. The goal is to try to develop deeply intelligible notions of causation rather than relying upon the "crutch of abstraction" inherent in theories that are based on the Born's statistical interpretation of the wavefunction.

Yea - but how do you know that reality isn't really like that? If the model agrees with observation its as good as any other. Think about it - there is no a-priori reason it must conform to your intuition about these things.

Thanks
Bill

 

[DennisN]

But then I saw the light. Today, I finally realized something very basic:

E=hv

The definition of a photon contains no spatial component. That is, it is a pure mathematical point.

That's no definition, it's an energy formula. Which doesn't include electric charge (0), mass (0) and spin (1).

The definition of a photon contains no spatial component. That is, it is a pure mathematical point.

Really? How come the photon carries momentum? The relativistic energy is
E^{2} = p^{2}c^{2} + m^{2}c^{4}
The mass of a photon is m=0, so this reduces to
p = \frac {E}{c} = \frac {h \nu}{\lambda \nu} = \frac {h}{\lambda}
where p is the momentum of a photon. Furthermore, if the photon has no spatial component, how come there's a thing called polarization?

What I realized is that we are arguing in the QM forum here, and the rules of classical mechanics simply do not apply.

E.g. conservation of energy and conservation of momentum still applies, AFAIK.

Photons are defined as being perfectly discrete units that are delivered discontinuously (i.e., in moments of zero duration) (my bolding).

In moments of zero duration? I do not understand what that means. Individual photons travel at max c. See this: paper, article1, article2. Anyway, you can't have a frequency without a time component. My regards.