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> Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics Wait? Since when did Einstein not accept Quantum Mechanics? He won the Nobel Prize for his work in discovering an i

> Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics Wait? Since when did Einstein not accept Quantum Mechanics? He won the Nobel Prize for his work in discovering an important part of Quantum Mechanics. Einstein rejected the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. That's not the same thing as rejecting Quantum Mechanics. I've seen no claims that he would object to either the Everett or Bohm Interpretations of QM. (But then again, he died before they were invented.) Einstein, by the way, is far from the only critic of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Quite a few physicists are drawn to the Everett Interpretation instead, for instance.

kgilpin 8y ago
Well, he never accepted non-locality. And it turns out, quantum mechanics is indeed non-local.
- nessus42 8y ago
  In the Everett interpretation, everything is local.
- codethief 8y ago
  This is a common misconception. (The Copenhagen interpretation of) QM is a local theory, in the sense that there's no faster-than-light travel of information. Otherwise you'd have to take into account what's happening at the other end of the universe in order to successfully predict the outcome of experiments. (Which I hear is what the people working on Bohmian mechanics struggle with.)
  - nessus42 8y ago
    It's been a while since I studied this, and I know that some Copenhagenist try to wiggle their way out of this, but if you consider the probability waves in the Copenhagen interpretation to be "real" and "measurement" to cause their collapse, book-keeping information by the universe would seem to have to travel at faster than the speed of light, IIRC. On the other hand, it's certainly been proven that this cannot be used to transmit information that you might like to at faster than the speed of light. So causality is preserved in any case.
nessus42 8y ago
I'm replying to myself here. I did a little research and discovered that Einstein was aware Bohm's interpretation, and Einstein seemed to think that it missed the mark. Einstein did die, however, two years before the publication of the Everett Interpretation, and I've seen no evidence that Einstein received any early information on that seminal Interpretation. It would be very interesting to know how Einstein would have received the Everett Interpretation. This is what Einstein had to say about Bohm's Interpretation, in a letter that Einstein wrote to Bohm about six months before he died: "In the last few years several attempts have been made to complete quantum theory as you have also attempted. But it seems to me that we are still quite remote from a satisfactory solution to the problem. I myself have tried to approach this by generalising the law of gravitation. But I must confess that I was not able to find a way to explain the atomistic character of nature. My opinion is that if an objective description through the field as an elementary concept is not possible, than one has to find a possibility to avoid the continuum (together with space and time) altogether. But I have not the slightest idea what kind of elementary concepts could be used in such a theory." From my reading of this, it seems that Einstein's greatest concern here is that GR and QM had not yet been unified. There is a sense in which no competent scientist can fully accept either QM or GR, despite their incredible accuracy in making predictions, because we know that they are incompatible with each other, and consequently, both wrong or incomplete in some very important manner.

kgilpin 8y ago

Well, he never accepted non-locality. And it turns out, quantum mechanics is indeed non-local.

nessus42 8y ago
In the Everett interpretation, everything is local.
codethief 8y ago
This is a common misconception. (The Copenhagen interpretation of) QM is a local theory, in the sense that there's no faster-than-light travel of information. Otherwise you'd have to take into account what's happening at the other end of the universe in order to successfully predict the outcome of experiments. (Which I hear is what the people working on Bohmian mechanics struggle with.)
- nessus42 8y ago
  It's been a while since I studied this, and I know that some Copenhagenist try to wiggle their way out of this, but if you consider the probability waves in the Copenhagen interpretation to be "real" and "measurement" to cause their collapse, book-keeping information by the universe would seem to have to travel at faster than the speed of light, IIRC. On the other hand, it's certainly been proven that this cannot be used to transmit information that you might like to at faster than the speed of light. So causality is preserved in any case.

nessus42 8y ago

I'm replying to myself here. I did a little research and discovered that Einstein was aware Bohm's interpretation, and Einstein seemed to think that it missed the mark. Einstein did die, however, two years before the publication of the Everett Interpretation, and I've seen no evidence that Einstein received any early information on that seminal Interpretation. It would be very interesting to know how Einstein would have received the Everett Interpretation. This is what Einstein had to say about Bohm's Interpretation, in a letter that Einstein wrote to Bohm about six months before he died: "In the last few years several attempts have been made to complete quantum theory as you have also attempted. But it seems to me that we are still quite remote from a satisfactory solution to the problem. I myself have tried to approach this by generalising the law of gravitation. But I must confess that I was not able to find a way to explain the atomistic character of nature. My opinion is that if an objective description through the field as an elementary concept is not possible, than one has to find a possibility to avoid the continuum (together with space and time) altogether. But I have not the slightest idea what kind of elementary concepts could be used in such a theory." From my reading of this, it seems that Einstein's greatest concern here is that GR and QM had not yet been unified. There is a sense in which no competent scientist can fully accept either QM or GR, despite their incredible accuracy in making predictions, because we know that they are incompatible with each other, and consequently, both wrong or incomplete in some very important manner.