Can Quantum Reality Provide a Single Metaphor for How the Universe Actually Works?

[Dr Alain L Fymat]

Newton’s view of the world as a “giant clockwork” crushed the medieval view of “crystal spheres”. In turn, modern quantum theory shattered irreparably Newton’s view so much so we are now certain the world is not a deterministic mechanism.

Quantum theory is peculiar in that it describes a measured atom very differently from an unmeasured atom. Thus, whereas the measured atom always has definite values for its attributes (whether innate such as momentum, or contextual such as position), the unmeasured atom never does.

In the naïve and common sense disturbance model of Herbert, an atom always possesses definite values for all its attributes (just like an ordinary object), whether that object is measured or not. The process of measurement disturbs the atom so profoundly that its measured attributes bear only a statistical relation to its unmeasured attributes. However, for some theoretical physicists (Born, Heisenberg, and their numerous followers), the unmeasured atom is not real in that its attributes are only created or realized in the act of measurement.

The above views have been recently contradicted by Bell in his now famous interconnected theorem. This theorem (not a conjecture or a supposition) proved mathematically that any conceivable model of reality, quantum or otherwise, must be non-local, that is the atom’s measured attributes are determined not just by events happening at the actual measurement site, but by events arbitrarily distant so that to reach the measurement site their influence must travel faster than light!

Bell’s theorem has immensely clarified the quantum reality question out of the various quantum realities or models of the world that are consistent with quantum theory. However, it requires that distant contributory events be super-luminal. Thus, the question posed in the title remains in its entirety for, it seems, what the world is we cannot truly say. What is your reality?