Has quantum mechanics proved that reality does not exist?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

This whole thread takes the opinion of Sabine Hossenfelder and treats that opinion as fact. Most scientist disagree with Sabine's opinion.

Why are you appealing to the authority ofSabine's opinion when she hasn't done the actual research? It's just an opinion that fits with her materialist outlook. She's basically selling books and getting youtube views pushing an opinion. I can post youtube videos with the exact opposite opinion by Physicist and the first thing you would scream is that it's appealing to authority yet you make an entire thread appealing to authority of Sabine's misguided opinion.

Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It

Now, physicists at the Australian National University have found further evidence for the illusory nature of reality. They recreated the John Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment and confirmed that reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, at least on the atomic scale.

scaleofuniverse.com...

Reality Doesn’t Exist Until We Measure It, Quantum Experiment Confirms
www.sciencealert.com...

New quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question
www.space.com...

Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

]But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

phys.org...

The quantum experiment that could prove reality doesn't exist Read

Now, a new class of experiments is putting Einstein’s conviction to the test, seeing if quantum weirdness stretches beyond the tiny world of quarks, atoms and qubits into the everyday world of tables, chairs and, well, moons. “If you can go from one atom to two atoms to three to four to five to a thousand, is there any reason why it stops?” says Jonathan Halliwell at Imperial College London.

www.newscientist.com...

New test backs up theory that the world doesn’t exist until we look at it
www.dailymail.co.uk...

Experiment suggests that reality doesn't exist until it is measured

Researchers working at the Australian National University (ANU) have conducted anexperiment that helps bolster the ever-growing evidence surrounding the weird causal properties inherent in quantum theory. In short, they have shown that reality does not actually exist until it is measured – at atomic scales, at least.

newatlas.com...

Show me the work that Sabine has done in these areas. Show me her published papers that experimentally refute what these papers are saying.

Sabine just makes YouTube videos of her opinion for the gullible to cling to. She's not doing any of the work in these areas. She's just giving her opinion and you're acting like her opinion refutes actual research LOL. Such hypocrisy.

The problem she has is that a physical wave function makes no sense but we have evidence that the wave function is real and non-physical.

The wave-function is real but nonphysical: A view from counterfactual quantum cryptography

Counterfactual quantum cryptography (CQC) is used here as a tool to assess the status of the quantum state: Is it real/ontic (an objective state of Nature) or epistemic (a state of the observer's knowledge)? In contrast to recent approaches to wave function ontology, that are based on realist models of quantum theory, here we recast the question as a problem of communication between a sender (Bob), who uses interaction-free measurements, and a receiver (Alice), who observes an interference pattern in a Mach-Zehnder set-up. An advantage of our approach is that it allows us to define the concept of "physical", apart from "real". In instances of counterfactual quantum communication, reality is ascribed to the interaction-freely measured wave function (ψ) because Alice deterministically infers Bob's measurement. On the other hand, ψ does not correspond to the physical transmission of a particle because it produced no detection on Bob's apparatus. We therefore conclude that the wave function in this case (and by extension, generally) is real, but not physical. Characteristically for classical phenomena, the reality and physicality of objects are equivalent, whereas for quantum phenomena, the former is strictly weaker. As a concrete application of this idea, the nonphysical reality of the wavefunction is shown to be the basic nonclassical phenomenon that underlies the security of CQC.

arxiv.org...

There was an experiment done where information was sent between point A and point B withoutthe transmission of a particle:

Direct counterfactual communication via quantum Zeno effect

Abstract
Intuition from our everyday lives gives rise to the belief that information exchanged between remote parties is carried by physical particles. Surprisingly, in a recent theoretical study [Salih H, Li ZH, Al-Amri M, Zubairy MS (2013) Phys Rev Lett 110:170502], quantum mechanics was found to allow for communication, even without the actual transmission of physical particles. From the viewpoint of communication, this mystery stems from a (nonintuitive) fundamental concept in quantum mechanics—wave-particle duality. All particles can be described fully by wave functions. To determine whether light appears in a channel, one refers to the amplitude of its wave function. However, in counterfactual communication, information is carried by the phase part of the wave function. Using a single-photon source, we experimentally demonstrate the counterfactual communication and successfully transfer a monochrome bitmap from one location to another by using a nested version of the quantum Zeno effect.

www.pnas.org...

How can reality exist prior to measurement when there's no time operator in quantum mechanics?

If I'm measuring the position x of an electron, all I can do is calculate the probabilities of finding the electron in postion x1, x2, x3 or x4 as an example.

The electron doesn't exist in any of those positions until mesured. How can it exist? It's in a state of superposition and there's no time operator that will give us the location of the electron prior to measurement.

For instance, a car driving at a steady 40 mph for 1 mile has a time component. So we can calculate the time at which the car should reach the 1 mile mark. There isn't a time operator in quantum mechanics and that would make no sense because the electron is in superposition not a definite point in time prior to measurement.

a reply to: neoholographic
Sabine Hossenfelder posted some of the same headlines/claims in her video as you did! She's not disputing that other physicists have made such claims. She's saying more or less that our current model of quantum mechanics has a problem (called the "measurement problem") and that others have used contradictory assumptions from that problem to make the claims. She is simply saying that we should just admit that the quantum mechanics measurement problem exists and we need a solution to that problem in order to have a model that will allow us to avoid the contradictions that led to the headline-making claims.

I doubt that even the physicists making the claims about reality would deny the existence of the "Measurement Problem", which is a well-known problem in physics. I also think they would admit that we need to find an agreed-upon solution to that problem, and it could very well change the way we interpret things. They might even admit such a solution could affect their claims about reality, so I don't think the divide here among physicists is as large as you are trying to portray it. I have yet to hear a physicist deny the existence of the "measurement problem", which is at the heart of this discussion, though I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few such outliers out there, there usually are for any topic.

originally posted by: Direne

I think Mr. Gödelwould strongly disagree with that conclusion. You are perfectly aware he clearly demonstrated the limits of logic. Actually, he did more than that if we couple his discoveries with those of Mr. Wittgenstein; they both proved, once and for all, that logic is just a shadow of reality.

I strongly agree. Also see Kierkegaard's leap of faith... logic can only bring you so far in establishing a comprehensive view of reality.

Yet there is still logical perpetuity to our world... look at the clockwork motion of astronomical bodies, the predictability of biochemical rates, Bernoulli's principle, and so on and so on. There are countless physical equations that depict the nature of reality, but at the end of the day this will never supply us with the full truth.

Reality does not exist...it is simply a term we have used to describe something. Look outside of the context of the word. When we say reality, what comes to mind? Both physical and mental properties. To prove reality exists in the physical sense then yes, Quantum Physics can do that. Which by the way it has...we call it matter. To prove it exists in the mental sense using Quantum Physics cannot be done, that I am aware.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Nope, what Sabine and others are doing is denying reality. They want quantum mechanics to fit into a materialist box and it doesn't. So to them there must be hidden variables or something else but they don't provide any evidence of that something else. They just say it must be because it's their belief.

Where's sabine's published works and experiments refuting these things? She just makes you tube videos and you act like her opinion is fact. You're appealing to authority. It's funny how you guys always say we're appealing to authority when we quote scientist that refute what you're saying but you just made an entire thread appealing to the authority of Sabine's opinion!!

Sabine is wrong. How can reality exist prior to measurement when the system is in a state of superposition? There's no time operator in Quantum Mechanics. This is obvious because the system isn't located in time anywere prior to measurement. It's in superposition. In fact, we can't say if time as we measure it means anything to the quantum system.

For instance, I can say I measured spin up of the electron at 1:22 PM. Measuring it at 1:22 PM only has meaning to me not to the quantum system. QFT tells us that what we call particles aren't particles in the material sense but excitations of underlying quantum fields.

For Sabine to be right, she would have to show that prior to measurement the electron is at x position at t time. So at 1:15 PM the electron is at x1 osition, at 1:18 the electron is at x2 position and so forth and so on. This is impossible and this is why there's not a time operator in quantum mechanics. The measurement postulate illustrates this:

The measurement postulate is crucial to quantum mechanics. If we measure a quantum system, we can only get one of the eigenvalues of the measured observable, such as position, energy and so on, with a probability. Immediately after the measurement, the system will collapse into the corresponding eigenstate instantly, known as state collapse. It is argued that the non-cloning theorem is actually a result of the measurement postulate, because non-cloning theorem would also hold in classical physics. The possibility of cloning in classical physics is actually the ability to fully measure a classical system, so that a classical state can be measured and prepared.

In reality, partial measurement is more common than full measurement. It should be noted that collapse-in and collapse-out of partial measurement happens randomly not only in space, but also over time. For instance, the detection of photon by a detector can be naturally understood in terms of this partial measurement postulate. When the wavefunction of a photon goes to a detector, it is not measured in full at the same time, namely it is not a full measurement. Its front part arrives at the detector first, hitting some area of the detector. It either collapses in at any point of the intersecting area in the detector or collapses and the corresponding probability will be shifted to other part of the wavefunction. This process continues until the photon is detected. If the photon has not been detected until the last part of the wavefunction reaches the detector, then the amplitude of this remaining wavefunction increases to 1 so as to detect the photon with certainty at the final step.

This explanation is given in the view that Wavefunction Is just the quantum system Entity itself, the WISE interpretation. In WISE interpretation, there is NO relation between the wavefunction and the quantum system, the wavefunction IS just the quantum system. The WISE interpretation is supported by the encounter delayed choice experiment, which has been reported in various media a few years ago.

phys.org...

This is why Sabine's opinion doesn't hold water.

The wavefunction can reach the detector and the quantum system isn't detected and there's no hidden variable or magic theory that can predict when this detection will occur. It's in a state of superposition until measured and there's no time operator that says the electron is at position x at t time.

This also points to a non-physical, timeless reality.

If you look at Wigner's Friend it shows that on a microscopic level, Wigner's friend can carry out a measurement in the lab and record that he measured vertical polarization of the photon at 1:30 PM. Wigner outside of the lab can look at the same system and measure interference until his friend in the lab tells him which measurement outcome occurred.

So in order for the two obervers to have a shared history they have to extract and share information about the state of the system.

So there's no time operator because timeless awareness interacts with the quantum system and extracts knowledge about the systems position, momentum and energy states.

How can you know the probable states that a quantum system can be in without a mind to calculate the probabilities and extract that knowledge?

Tesla said:

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” ― Nikola Tesla

Here's a couple of quotes from Werner Heisenberg:

“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.” ― Werner Heisenberg

“[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.” ― Werner Heisenberg

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Being halfway through Gregg Braden's book "The Divine Matrix", I'm happy to read your thread.

All this is above my paygrade, but it is fascinating to read.

I'm leaning toward the idea that we live in a hologram, perhaps the Holographic Universe. I also like Braden's idea of "participatory universe". Very exciting thoughts here.

a reply to: cooperton

Why do you put all of your faith in a 400nanometer band of electromagnetism that we call the visible light spectrum? There is far more to the entirety of existence than meets the eye.

Why shouldn't I defer to the 400 nanometer band of electromagnetism for substantive measurement? Why question the credibility of such methods just because it's inconvenient to your non methods? Your objections are not based on science but emotions.

originally posted by: jerich0
a reply to: TzarChasm

Our thoughts are nothing more than the chemical and bioelectrical connection in a lump of grey matter contained within the bony structure of our heads.

To think, is to merely apply different emotive connections. Even our eyes see upside down, we just learn to see it as right way up.

When people say we have a personality, a soul that defines us, think of those who have suffered traumatic brain injury, who come back as completely different people. When they say, when we die, we live on.... well, there is nothing more catastrophic as brain death. Reality is a figment. Each of us have our own version. Sure, a rock is a rock, but some see it as an obstacle, others as a challenge.

Life.... Don't talk to me about life.... - Marvin.

You say "it's nothing more than" and I say "it's more than nothing". Relativity in motion. But how we relate to simple physics doesn't change the properties of physics, only our identity within the context of chemistry and causality. That's all this has ever been, a desperate gold panning enterprise trying to stir up a hint of precious mineral amid the muck of our day to day functions. We want more and we are willing to hack the fabric of existence itself to achieve that end.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

As Sabine said, it's the inconsistencies in QM which is more interesting than the experiment itself.

Imagine the same experiment was designed without Alice. The system is simply the screen capturing the particles and the detector. The experiment is timed to go off at 3 PM on Friday. Wigner is outside the lab at 2:45 PM on Friday and waits for the experiment to be executed. At 3 PM the experiment goes off as planned. The wave function is updated or "collapsed". Wigner doesn't know the outcome until he opens the door and reads the detector.

In the meantime, the detector recorded the result - the particles have assumed their eigenstate - the result is part of the universe and the results are irreversible.

Wigner is ignorant of the result. Does that mean that whatever is inside the lab remains in superposition while he's wallowing in ignorance outside? I don't think so because the result has been generated but Wigner - and the rest of the world for that matter - just doesn't have that information. Once Wigner opens the door and reads the detector, he now knows the result.

It doesn't matter what form the detector takes - an instrument or a person.
Wigner obviously is conscious. But so what? He didn't play any role in the experiment other than waiting to review the results.

If no one ever viewed the results it wouldn't matter. The information generated by the experiment is now part of the universe regardless whether an artificial detector, a robot, or Wigner ever sees the results.

Superposition is just a mess of probabilities. We can't view the wave function because there's nothing to see.
As Sabine said, the measurement is a real physical process. Multiple mysteries as to the whys and hows of that process.

P.S. Also I would say that including Wigner in the experiment as part of a single superposition is probably a mistake because as you add observers or other participants, it simply creates more systems. That process can go on ad infinitum. And it wouldn't provide any more information than the experiment described above.

a reply to: TzarChasm

But it's fact. We are no more than what we perceive.. change anything, reality changes before us.. we create it from our individual perceptions... est quod est..

I do like your train of thought, however.. substance to ponder..

a reply to: neoholographic

Reality is just a function of the detection system. Doesn't matter whether it's quantum or classical.

Whatever we perceive as a human unit is the result of our capability to detect it. We develop microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopic instruments to make up for our own deficient innate detection system. Microorganisms existed before before Van Leewenhoek invented the single lens microscope. Consciousness is just the sum of all human evolutionary progress over the millennia. It's an ongoing process.

Quantum mechanics wasn't known until it was detected i.e. the detection system being mathematics.
A sunflower seeks the sun utilizing its chemical detection system.
The same process works up to and includes humans. No mystery to consciousness. It's just the additive effect of evolution.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

how much more real does it get that we exist and are aware of reality and can discuss the nature of reality
if its not real then what is it?

if its about the nature of measurement and what constitutes a measurement then existence itself is a measure
the world works by measurement in chemistry and biology
nature measures itself
so surely the fact that the universe exists means that the entire thing is a measure of itself

the measurement problem itself the inability to observe the wave form collapse but we know from the maths that its happening , just like a black hole , and gravitational waves and magnetic fields, they cant be observed directly but we know they happen or to a degree of certainty anyway

isn't that "something" the act of our consciousness measuring "observing" the system
I think that there always has to be a choice , so it cant exist in a superposition until an act or a choice is made by a conscious party , like the the cat cant be either alive or dead once the choice is made , as in the act of measurement
its like pinging the system for feedback because we are a part of that system, so when you make a conscious choice to observe, or interact measure, or even think, you interact with the wave function and the super positions collapse into the one

hasn't it been researched that consciousness effects the quantum field ?
the global human consciousness project and quantum random number generators

Too many long posts in this thread. Post for us drunken bums. Say it in 2 sentences.

Or wake me up later.

a reply to: sapien82

"hasn't it been researched that consciousness effects the quantum field? the global human consciousness project and quantum random number generators"

Yes, it has been and it is researched within the field of 'mind-matter interaction', but it is still debated whether the statistical analyses really prove such an interaction exists or whether they are statistical artifacts. This critique comes from the maths camp.

From the metaphysical camp, the critique comes from the fact that those defending the existence of mind-matter interaction are always beings with a mind (usually humans), as if those who do not have a mind could not influence matter.

There are also strong opposition from the relativists in the sense that accepting mind-matter interaction automatically means the Universe is designed as to favor and privilege those with a mind or those systems with a consciousness, as if consciousness was a must, something we (I'm a relativist, you see) cannot accept as we oppose any design who impose privileges to this or that being, beable, designoids, or particle. We prefer an objective, life-form agnostic, neutral Reality. Otherwise Reality could become too suspiciously human...

a reply to: Direne

From the metaphysical camp, the critique comes from the fact that those defending the existence of mind-matter interaction are always beings with a mind (usually humans), as if those who do not have a mind could not influence matter.

As Arbitrager mentioned its the superposition measurement problem which probably does not violate cause and effect.
For example the rotor offset of WW1 era cryptographic equipment is an easy to understand superposition, there was a single correct message that could be discovered using the correct analysis but not by casual interception in that case.

The German cryptography staff that analyzed the SIGSALY radio intercepts back in WW2 thought it was teletype data.
German cryptographers in the 40's had extended the Polish rotor machine mathematics from simple 4 rotor enigma field cipher machines to electrically driven 12 rotor teletype machines for their use.

The evidence appears to show that the Nazi leadership didn't trust their military signals intelligence people at Erwin Rommel's level enough to warrant spending a lot of money on communication systems that could not be broken.
But there may be a reality where Rommel used the Enigma field cipher to authenticate his communications with the Allies.

SIGSALY was not a rotor offset superposition but there was no way the public or low level cryptographers could know that, so a correct understanding of SIGSALY was not in their reality until it was disclosed.

For cryptographic messages that employ a one time pad there can be no single correct message without knowing the intended key, the message could be any phrase that fits the length of the cryptographic space.

Choosing the correct key for a cipher causes the message to become readable whether the choice is made by a human mind or a machine weighing cipher statistical information.

originally posted by: jerich0
Too many long posts in this thread. Post for us drunken bums. Say it in 2 sentences.

Or wake me up later.

Light behaves like a particle instead of a wave when its trajectory becomes known. This shows that light itself is aware of our awareness.

originally posted by: cooperton
Light behaves like a particle instead of a wave when its trajectory becomes known. This shows that light itself is aware of our awareness.

Fairly certain what we call reality is actually just all created and occurring in the consciousness of an infinite conscious being also known as God, which exists in the zero dimension.

So everything is nothing, but consciousness.

originally posted by: DaRAGE

Fairly certain what we call reality is actually just all created and occurring in the consciousness of an infinite conscious being also known as God, which exists in the zero dimension.

So everything is nothing, but consciousness.

Yeah I agree. Matter being 99.99% empty space strongly insists it is a mental projection.

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: jerich0
Too many long posts in this thread. Post for us drunken bums. Say it in 2 sentences.

Or wake me up later.

Light behaves like a particle instead of a wave when its trajectory becomes known. This shows that light itself is aware of our awareness.

It showed that mechanical observation required to detect particle behavior minutely influences the subject being studied. There's no magic happening.

I think we will know the answers to all the questions after our bodies expire and we leave this dimension.

a reply to: fromunclexcommunicate

For cryptographic messages that employ a one time pad there can be no single correct message without knowing the intended key, the message could be any phrase that fits the length of the cryptographic space.

Errrm.... no. In a one-time pad cryptographic scheme it is not enough that the text against which you XOR the original message be equal in length to the original message. It must also be totally random, otherwise decrypting the message is feasible. What makes OTP unbreakable is to use a key as long as the original message, and as random as you can make it.

Anyway, I feel your answer is totally unrelated to what I wrote, unless you mind elaborating further.