None of the current well known quantum interpretations are satisfactory–they all have shortcomings that cause logical contradictions to known experimental data. I think all would agree that the Everett many worlds interpretation has an element of absurdity to it (doesn’t mean it’s wrong, just seems improbable), and the Copenhagen interpretation where decoherence occurs somewhere near a detector has significant logical problems (see the EPR paradox to start). Physicists seem to like best the modified Bohm interpretation that works around Bell’s inequality, but it adds a wave term (the guiding pilot wave) to equations describing time evolution of particle position and motion. This redirects the particle to form an interference pattern on a target–but in so doing, since the particle has momentum, it exerts a force for which we have no experimental evidence.
So, I thought long and hard and came up with a new quantum interpretation that seems to overcome these problems, and as far as I can tell, seems logically consistent. Better yet, particles that conform to the assumptions of this interpretation must meet the constraints of special relativity.
I thought this interpretation flows logically out of the thought process of how quantum interference works. We know that quantum entangled particles will always resolve to opposite states instantaneously across any distance, appearing to disobey causality (when a detector resolves one of the particles, that sets the state of the other particle instantaneously even if they are far apart–see various Aspect experiment variations). But, neither particle can exceed the speed of light, nor can any communication between the particles exceed the speed of light.
Now that gives a powerful hint of what this implies–that if the momentum aspect of the particle cannot exceed the speed of light, something else must exceed it. I realized that if the particle was represented by some construct of waves, the waves could form a rogue-wave–a soliton or delta function where the group could not exceed the speed of light, but component wave phases would not have such a limit–a change in phase would be reflected across the entire length of the wave instantaneously. The rate of change in time of this phase is limited, so that makes the particle as a whole causal–but the instantaneous effect of this phase change would cause an instantaneous effect on quantum interference over the entire distance of the wave. And–a quantum interference effect would relocate the particle by virtue of the delta function sum of interfering waves, without the expenditure of energy (the problem with the Bohm interpretation).
This got much, much more interesting as I started working on the math for such a particle–I almost accidentally discovered that such particles would always look like it was moving at the same speed, regardless of how fast an observer was moving! Instantly, I realized that this quantum interpretation would derive the primary postulate of special relativity–and leads to some pretty astonishing conclusions. This happens because unlike a solid baseball, a group wave will classically Doppler shift according to the observer’s relative velocity. If the entire wave Doppler shifts simultaneously, which will be true with this quantum instantaneous phase wave interpretation, the relative velocity of the observer’s frame of reference is exactly cancelled out by the corresponding Doppler shift of the particle’s wave components.
To me, this was an incredibly important finding–it says that any particle formed from instantaneous phase waves will act according to special relativity. And–if a particle obeys special relativity, it must Doppler shift–and thus must be composed only of various types of wave. There cannot be any internal structure in an electron, for example, that doesn’t Doppler shift and thus it must be composed solely of wave components. Now, admittedly, that’s a pretty big box of components–they don’t have to be planar waves, but could be oscillating vectors, helical waves, compression waves, you name it. All it has to do is Doppler shift and special relativity will fall out.
Amazing! Or so I thought. I proposed this to many different experts in this field, and all of them pooh-poohed it. I submitted to 5 journals–all rejected. I guess I’m totally on my own, which is rather a shame–I think there’s some really good new stuff here.
Agemoz
PS: here’s the mathematical derivation, feel free to comment:
Tags: interpretation, physics, quantum, special relativity, speed of light
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