Pilot-wave is No More, Pilot-wave cracked by Bohr

[jedishrfu]

Pilot wave Quantum Mechanics is doomed from recent experiments but wait there's more:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/famo...ve-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/

In 2005, a student working in the fluid physicist Yves Couder’s laboratory in Paris discovered by chance that tiny oil droplets bounced when plopped onto the surface of a vibrating oil bath. Moreover, as the droplets bounced, they started to bunny-hop around the liquid’s surface. Couder soon figured out that the droplets were “surfing on their own wave,” as he put it — kicking up the wave as they bounced and then getting propelled around by the slanted contours of the wave.
...
Improbably, the person who put the irreparable crack in de Broglie’s idea is Niels Bohr’s grandson, the fluid physicist Tomas Bohr. A professor at the Technical University of Denmark who, as a child, enjoyed puzzling over riddles posed by his grandfather, Tomas Bohr heard about Couder’s bouncing-droplet experiments seven years ago and was immediately intrigued. “I felt a genuine interest in trying to see whether you could really get a deterministic quantum mechanics,” he said about his decision to enter the fray. Given his family history, he added, “maybe I also felt some obligation. I felt I should really try to see if it was true or not.”

 

[StevieTNZ]

Interesting! I'll await responses from the professionals who know the technical details more thoroughly

 

[atyy]

I wouldn't pay any attention to Natalie Wolchover's nonsense physics journalism. Her first article on this was already bad. This merely compounds the error.

 

[jedishrfu]

Journalists always like these stories of the grandson reprizing the grandfather's glory.

There a similar story with the grandson of HG Wells who directed a movie version of the Time Machine story in 2002 with Guy Pearce. I liked it but not as much as the Rock Hudson version of 1963. However, they did have a cool librarian avatar:



and I heard there's a TV version in the works:

https://www.slashfilm.com/the-time-machine-tv-series-hg-wells-sky/

But I digress, back to the Pilot-wave...

 

[Vanadium 50]

not as much as the Rock Hudson version of 1963

Do you mean the Rod Taylor version of 1960, direceted by George Pal? Or did Rock Hudson make a third version?

 

[vanhees71]

Well, the oil-drop analogy goes not as far as to realize de Broglie Bohm theory (which would be a kind of "analogue computer" for Bohmian mechanics ;-)). That's no surprise to me. It's an interesting phenomenon of classical fluid mechanics, but that's it. It doesn't have the non-local structure of Bohmian mechanics, which is for non-relativistic QT equivalent to minimally interpreted QT (by construction). The Quanta Magazine is in general of some entertaining quality, but it seems not to be a reliable source on science. It's not too bad science journalism but not more!

 

[jedishrfu]

Do you mean the Rod Taylor version of 1960, direceted by George Pal? Or did Rock Hudson make a third version?

Oops, I guess I’m living in an alternate timeline where Rock Hudson and Doris Day starred in the movie and not Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. Yes the George Pal pre cgi era movie with all the cool stop action film work.

 

[eloheim]

It doesn't have the non-local structure of Bohmian mechanics, which is for non-relativistic QT equivalent to minimally interpreted QT (by construction). The Quanta Magazine is in general of some entertaining quality, but it seems not to be a reliable source on science. It's not too bad science journalism but not more!

In fairness the latter part of the article says exactly this. As far as the headline or jist of the article being misleading (or otherwise wrong), however, I can't say.

Edit: I mean no one sanely doubted a theory that can't reproduce entanglement would fail as a description of the world, so in that sense the article sort of blows up a non-starter to exaggerated proportions just in order to tear it down again.