There's two parts to physics: the math, and the explanation. There are three explanations of the math behind quantum mechanics, but the physics community rejects one, not because of any evidence against it, but because they find it "absurd", "philosophically distasteful".
I'm not 100% convinced this forbidden explanation is correct, but it deserves more serious consideration. The idea alone has changed my life.
Speaking of life, my father was a PhDc in computational physics. When I was a kid, quality time started out tossing the ball around, but then Dad would get excited about a mathematical concept, and we'd end up at the kitchen table as he graphed the curve the ball took.
Kids understand classical physics instinctively. Without having to be told, they learn to throw the ball higher than its destination. To account for the drop while it flies.
When you graph the curve of the ball's path, it has a very literal explanation – the one represents the other. You can hold it up and see the same shape.
Like pixels on a screen, quantum mechanics studies the smallest pieces of reality. So small, every experiment involves billions and trillions and quadrillions of particles.
Quantum mechanics is built on top of statistical mechanics, which like the name implies, uses statistics to model those particles. Being statistical, it's built on probabilities. Extremely accurate, but still probabilities, and therefore containing uncertainty.
All the explanations try to figure out how the uncertainty maps back to our everyday reality.
The mainstream explanation, Copenhagen, says the uncertainty in the math literally matches physical reality, like the graph of the baseball. When a tiny little part of reality is not being "observed", it doesn't exist. This leads to all kinds of voodoo, the cat that's alive and dead at the same time. But it does have an appealing finality: all the difficult questions can get rejected out of hand. Only physical results matter, and the math delivers those in spades."Shut up and calculate," they like to say.
Explanation #2, "Many-worlds", says the uncertainty means that there's a separate universe for every possibility. We just never know which of these many worlds we're in. This also explains the math, but introduces a lot of problems, like where these other worlds came from.
The forbidden theory is called superdeterminism. It is the simplest of all three – "many worlds" without the "many". It suggests physical reality is what it looks like, there's only one world, and the uncertainty in the math simply represents our lack of knowledge about the future.
Simple, physical, doesn't require flights of metaphysical fancy. Of course, there's a catch.
If the uncertainty in the math represents our lack of knowledge about the future, then it does not represent uncertainty in the future. Superdeterminism suggests that the future may be predetermined.
This idea, predeterminism, mainstream physicists find objectionable. If they don't have total freedom to conduct any experiment they feel like choosing, what's the point?
But it's not pre-determinism, it's super-determinism. The difference is not about the future, it's about freedom.
What is freedom? Are we truly free to choose from any and all possibilities?
It feels like I am free to make choices. But feelings can be misleading. It also feels like the sun "comes up" in the morning.
More to come.