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Bell's theorem refuted?
- abetusk 5y agoI'm highly suspicious of this paper. The ideas aren't really presented very clearly, so it's really hard to understand what the "trick" is. If you believe QM is true then you flat out cannot have a local hidden variable theory. One possible way to "salvage" Bell's inequality with a local hidden variable theory is to effectively cheat by tying the chance of detecting a particle to the detector parameter (like the angle of the polarizer) and then throwing out some detections (detector A found a particle but detector B didn't fire, say). This effectively inflates the numerator in the probability in favor of the correlation while deflating the denominator, effectively discarding uncorrelated pairs. From what I understand, physicists are well aware of this problem and a significant portion of the entanglement experiments are devoted to justify how they're overcoming this loophole though I'm in absolutely no position to understand or judge if they're doing it well. Maybe this is what the paper is talking about when considering a "contextual model"? If so, they don't present it in a clear or digestible way, which makes me suspicious that they're using terminology to hide something.
- tines 5y agoLink to the paper "On a contextual model refuting Bell's theorem": https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/134/10004 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/134/100... This is amazing if it's real. Can an expert shed any light on it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- riccardomc 5y ago> As a consequence, the concept of a quantum computer also comes into question, as it relies upon the assumption that a quantum system bears simultaneous information about two mutually exclusive outcomes. As this assumption is no longer tenable, the diversity of the solution of a quantum computer is considerably restricted. Wow, this is way over my pay grade, but it sounds like this result makes quantum computers much harder to justify?
- latenightcoding 5y agoit is an inaccurate statement.
- 13415 5y agoThis looks like a big deal if it's true but is it? There is a phrase "For over 55 years, John Bell has misled the physicists community and made us believe that nature does show superluminal nonlocal interactions." that looks a bit like a red flag to me, at least it's unusually rude. But I'm not a physicist. Could a physicist chime in and tell me what to make of this paper?
- miguelmurca 5y agoI would take this with a very big grain of salt. Edit: After reading the introduction (keep in mind I haven't read it through)... > In this paper, a local realistic but contextual model is presented, where the measurement results are predetermined but the polarization or spin (respectively) of particles in the singlet state is not fixed. So the argument is that you're not collapsing the wavefunction so much as you don't know what you're measuring until you measure it?.. How is this compatible with a Stern–Gerlach experiment?
- Jiro 5y ago>For over 55 years, John Bell has misled the physicists community and... The way this is phrased, and the topic itself, makes this strongly sound like a crackpot that somehow sneaked into a journal.
- stephc_int13 5y agoI disagree, showing a bit of irreverence is not a tell-tale sign of being a crackpot. Also, having misled a community do not imply having done so voluntarily.
- sthnblllII 5y agoThe authors of the paper didnt write that. Thats the article's words.
- monocasa 5y agoThe article's author is the paper's author as well.
- sthnblllII 5y agoNice lol. My bet is on crackpot then.
- joshuamorton 5y agoThe article author is the paper author.
- frakt0x90 5y agoYes. I don't think there's every been a theorem that could be classified as maliciously misleading. And even if the author didn't mean to make it sound malicious, the grandiose language is unbecoming of an academic article.
- ajju 5y agoI don't see the text you quote in the actual paper. Here is a link to the paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/134/10004/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/134/100...
- arbitrage 5y agothis is pretty dense for the lay-person, but the author themselves sums it up better in the actual paper: > "It is definitely not the intention of this paper to question the derivation of Bell's inequality. Bell's proof is mathematically correct. The point is simply that the assumptions of Bell's inequality —namely, the restriction to non-contextual models—do not comprehensively describe conceivable physical reality. > "The model should reproduce the QM predictions of polarization measurements of entangled photons. In doing so, it would describe measurement results violating Bell's inequality." The paper will be a slog if you don't know much QM or math; if you know some, you can likely get a handle on it.
- edko 5y agoI know very little physics and mathematics, so apologies in advance if I am asking something very stupid, but is this a theorem in the mathematical sense of the word?
- szeptik 5y agoI am also confused by the idea of a theorem that can be refuted. As far as I know, if something can be refuted by experimental evidence then it cannot be a theorem.
- miguelmurca 5y agoYes, in that it establishes an incompatibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem
- zffr 5y agoReddit thread discussing the paper: https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/nig8d5/bells_theorem_refuted_on_a_contextual_model/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/nig8d5/bells_theor...
- thinkr42 5y agoSkeptical to say the least, only because I think this person would likely get a Nobel Prize if this was proven to the be the case. Bell's theorem is huge in QM, usually introduced very early in the Quantum track. It'd be awesome if there was a flaw, but the implications go far beyond quantum computing then.
- avsteele 5y agoIt is not a 'refutation' of the theorem in the true sense. It is just saying one if its assumptions is unfounded. From the paper: >It is definitely not the intention of this paper to question the derivation of Bell’s inequality. Bell’s proof is mathematically correct. The point is simply that the assumptions of Bell’s inequality —namely, the restriction to non-contextual models— do not comprehensively describe conceivable physical reality. I am familiar with Bell's theorem and the early work of Aspect in this subject. I have no memory of what a 'contextual model' is! So I can't comment on how interesting the paper is.
- jacinabox 5y ago> I have no memory of what a 'contextual model' is! So I can't comment on how interesting the paper is. The author doesn't define it either. Define your terms.
- johnbell 5y agoWhat did I ever do to Eugen Muchowski?
- mabbo 5y agoLet's all not be too hasty here. There's a lot of worrying signs, in my view. The paper itself has a sole author, a post-doc with a single paper on arXiv.org[0]. And the paper is being published in a low-impact rated journal[1]. That doesn't rule it out as a breakthrough, but it means more skepticism is warranted. > For over 55 years, John Bell has misled the physicists community and made us believe... The author makes this a personal, nefarious attack that has been played on us. Not a mistake or disagreement, but that John Bell knew he was wrong. > Einstein said that ... Not many believed him but this was the starting point for me when I came in touch with Bell's theorem. This feels to me like the author is saying "Well Einstein says I'm right". Overall, this feels like something we'll not be talking about for long. (But I'd LOVE to be wrong!) [0]https://arxiv.org/search/physics?searchtype=author&query=Muchowski%2C+E https://arxiv.org/search/physics?searchtype=author&query=Muc... [1]https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0295-5075 https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0295-5075
- lupire 5y agoThe author is a former postdoc, who was active in academia in the 1970s, and then reappeared on the scene in 2017 to write this paper. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eugen-Muchowski https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eugen-Muchowski
- ajarmst 5y agoHowever, his Doctorate is in Chemical Engineering and what field and area for his postdoc research isn't identified. A postdoc Chemical Engineer wouldn't normally be working on the theoretical foundations of quantum mechanics. I also have to assume that the claim that he is retired after a "[p]rofessional career in the industry" means that he is a retired Chemical Engineer, not a postdoc researcher in quantum mechanics, despite identifying his alma maters as his research affiliation with only a tiny footnote disclosing that he is 'retired'. This is also the latest of multiple attempts to publish this work over a period of years---and is apparently only the second paper he's written. If he has indeed 'refuted' Bell's Theorem (and thus undermined the foundations of large swaths of theoretical Quantum Mechanics), one might expect he'd have at least one collaborator, a current research affiliation, and the interest of a journal with an impact factor greater than 2. It's possible he is the mythical solitary untrained genius, shunned by the establishment and producing Nobel-prize caliber research in his basement. That's probably not the way to bet, though.
- laughinghan 5y agoA few notes: • a quick search for "refuting bell's theorem" will turn up attempts in 2000, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2017, etc, so let's take this with a huge grain of salt • Europhysics Letters is a reasonably old journal (1986) but an impact factor of ~2 is pretty low; I wouldn't consider this a major journal • As the Reddit discussion notes: "Just because you call your model locally realistic doesn't mean it's actually locally realistic. Calling it "contextual" doesn't change that. ... That part where the "context" of photon 1 changes the polarization of photon 2? That's not local.": https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/nig8d5/bells_theorem_refuted_on_a_contextual_model/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/nig8d5/bells_theor...
- ipaddr 5y agoIt is a major journal now.
- jldugger 5y agoJust sayin, if this were real you'd publish it in Science or Nature, not something with an Impact factor of 2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPL_(journal)#Abstracting,_indexing,_and_impact_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPL_(journal)#Abstracting,_ind...). And probably you'd want a collaborator on the paper, if only to double check your math before submitting.
- ipaddr 5y agoIf it hasn't been published in nature or Science and passed some gatekeeper then the idea should be rejected? Strange no one is arguing the science.
- gus_massa 5y agoThe problem is that until the section "Predicting measurement results for the initial context" (inclusive) it is totally trivial if you have a background in Physics and Quantum Mechanics. It's not the usual model because it uses one (or two?) hidden variables, but it's easy to understand. But the next section "Predicting measurement results for an arbitrary context" is totally unintelligible. My guess is that the unintelligible part is hiding that when you measure a photon with a polarizer with an angle alpha, the other photon gets that information with an implicit faster than light communication. I have to read it again a third time, and I guess I'll need a fourth or fifth before I can have a definitive answer.
- jldugger 5y ago> If it hasn't been published in nature or Science and passed some gatekeeper then the idea should be rejected? No but if it's legit they'd take it. And yea, I expect a researcher to be passingly familiar with the most popular research journals that everyone reads. Don't you?
- teilo 5y agoAnd here we have another one. Add it to the same pile as the Riemann Zeta "proofs."
- stephc_int13 5y agoI always found Bell's theorem frustrating in an unpleasant slight-of-hand way. To be honest, I'd like to see it refuted.