Proof of Many Worlds: Decoherence and Hidden Variables Explained

[I2004]

http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_nist.asp

they have proof that a macroscopic object can exist in two distinct locations at once and decoherence just hides the many worlds? They even separate the states by pushing them apart. This must mean they were seperate?



If we ignore copenhagon, this experiement must mean hidden variables and all others must be false and many worlds right? or am I missing something.



I would really like some help please as this stuff depresses me a bit lol

 

[Demystifier]

This experiment does not prove or disprove any otherwise acceptable interpretation of QM, including many-worlds and hidden variables. It only disproves certain naive versions of the collapse postulate, which nobody serious believed in in the first place.

 

[vanhees71]

There is only one quantum theory today, and that's the one taught in textbooks. You don't need (any flavor) of Copenhagen/Princeton, de Broglie-Bohm, many worlds or even more esoterical "interpretations". The minimal statistiscal interpretation is enough to apply very successfully the quantum theory to real-world observations and experiments.

I can't say much about the experiment in the link. Perhaps one can find a serious presentation of it somewhere, so that one can try to understand it better. I'm sure it's somewhere published in a peer-reviewed journal (last but not least one of the authors is one of this year's Nobel prize winners :-)).

What I can say with certainty is that a particle is not at two places at once. It may well be that the particle is prepared in a quantum state that implies a probability distribution for its position that peaks at some different places. This doesn't mean, however that the particle is at these two places at once but simply that its position is not prepared to be determined better than with the probability given by the corresponding wave function.