What is Wrong with Quantum Mechanics

Quantum Theory, or Quantum Mechanics (QM), is meant to be a fundamental theory in Physics that provides a description of nature at the scale of atoms and below, and since the mid 1920s has been accepted by many as being the foundation on which nearly all of modern Physics is based. It is meant to be incredibly accurate in its match of observed data in a wide variety of fields, and thus is described by its proponents as incredibly successful.

Participants of the 1927 Solvay Conference on Physics, considered key in establishing the legitimacy of QM [52, 53].
Note that whilst Marie Curie was a key participant in this and other Solvay Conferences on Physics, she never worked on quantum theory, whilst both Planck and Einstein famously rejected QM [53].
Photo from the Solvay Institute archives

However, there are people, including myself, that believe that QM has actually held back the progress of humanity in Physics and caused a large amount of time and money to be spent on purely mathematical theories that have no basis in reality. In fact, QM is not even Physics.

Let us go back to the basics. Physics is basically the study of the physical, i.e. something which actually exists in Nature. As such any theory of Physics should be based on something that is potentially measurable, either directly or indirectly, even if we may not yet have the technology to do so.

As mentioned on my KISS and Per Bak pages if there are multiple theories that explain the same phenomena then the simpler one is more likely to be correct, and it is important not only for a theory to explain current data, but also to explain future data. In fact, if a theory explains current data with incredible precision, that is actually a red flag as it is often an indicator of overfitting, meaning it is highly unlikely to explain future data well, and so be a poor reflection of reality.

Let us start not at the beginning with QM, but instead with the words of one of its most respected and vocal proponents, Nobel Prize laureate Richard P. Feynman. One of his most famous quotes, delivered in 1964 during a lecture at MIT, was “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics” [1]. Hardly a glowing endorsement of something that is meant to be the bedrock of modern Physics – would you employ someone to build your residence if they admitted that they didn’t really understand how housing foundations worked?

Werner Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the creation of quantum mechanics” [2]. One of his primary contributions to QM is the uncertainty principle [3] that generally bears his name, which basically means you can never precisely know both the position and velocity (or more accurately momentum) of a particle at the same time. Whilst this seems ludicrous in the world we live in, once you get to the world of the very small it makes sense, once you consider how we measure the position of a particle.

When you’re talking about a particle the size of an atom or smaller, the only way we can know where it is is by it emitting something we can measure, or by us bouncing something off it that we can measure. In both cases (thanks to conservation of momentum) that will cause the particle itself to move, and seeing as the speed of light is finite, there will always be a short period of time before we get the information that tells us where the particle was. So we know where the particle was, but not where it is now. The more objects (e.g. photons) you bounce off the particle the better the idea you will get of where it was, but the more momentum (and hence velocity) you will transfer to the particle. Basically this is just saying that there is an uncertainty caused by the way we measure things, which has been known about centuries – in mathematics it is generally referred to as a “margin of error” [32].

Because of this uncertainty in many equations you will see a particle represented by a probability cloud, or a wave, with the denser the part of the cloud or higher the wave the more likely it is for it to be in that location. That’s all very well and good, but QM takes this idea to the level of ridiculousness with quantum tunnelling.

A good summary of all the fudges that this is used to explain is on Wikipedia [4]. Let’s start with the most obvious use; a physical barrier. In the real world if an object, say a billiard ball, approaches a barrier, say the edge of the table, we know that it is going to bounce off the barrier, unless it is moving with such velocity is smashes through the barrier, breaking it in the first place. Not so with quantum tunnelling – if the uncertainty of the particle is so large that the width of the probability cloud/wave is larger than the width of the barrier, then when the particle gets so close to the barrier that the uncertainty suggests it might actually be on the other side of the barrier, QM says it CAN be on the other side of the barrier – in fact, if you shoot enough particles at the barrier some will inevitably magically appear on the other side of the barrier, without affecting the barrier in any way at all.

Similarly if a wave approaches the barrier, then some of the energy of the wave will magically pass through the barrier, proportional to the uncertainty. This is clearly rubbish – the uncertainty principle is just telling us we can’t know for certain where the particle is at a certain point in time, but if the particle is approaching a barrier from some distance we know that it will either bounce off the barrier or break it; the particle will not magically pass through the barrier as if it is not there. The same holds true for energy barriers – a particle either has enough energy to get through or it does not, whereas in QM if you throw enough low-energy particles at an energy barrier some of them will eventually get through.

Unfortunately QM hides this ridiculousness in many layers of mathematics, to prevent anyone from working out what is actually happening, unless they spend an inordinate amount of time looking into it. One of the great mathematical fudges is Hilbert Space. I think Professor Robert Griffiths of Carnegie Mellon University [5] sums it up perfectly when he says “In quantum mechanics the state of a physical system is represented by a vector in a Hilbert space: a complex vector space with an inner product. The term “Hilbert space” is often reserved for an infinite-dimensional inner product space having the property that it is complete or closed”. Yes, you read that right, an infinite-dimensional space.

As explained on my KISS page you can make a model to fit any data perfectly with infinite dimensions, so it’s no wonder that QM is so “precise” with existing data. However, that also means massive overfitting, which means the model will generally be terrible at classifying new data, and also terrible in explaining the underlying principles of Nature. As such it is hardly surprising when you hear that someone wants to rewrite the rules of QM, or merely that they just don’t explain new observations of the Universe [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, et al].

Other tricks that QM uses are hidden variables [11] – when even infinite dimensions are not enough to explain reality, add another for even more overfitting, rather than admit your model has massive problems.

Another favourite is the virtual particle. The uncertainty principle actually has children; if you can’t work out the momentum or position of a particle, then that means there is a limit to how small a measurement you can make as well in size (Planck length) or duration (Planck time) [12]. QM proponents use this as an excuse to invent both particles and situations – they just make up particles and say something like “well, if this particle is created out of nowhere and then disappears again in a shorter amount of time than Planck time then that is fine, even if it violates Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy, as we can’t measure it”. This is a great trick, as it means if your model of reality doesn’t match reality then you can just make up as many virtual particles as you like to explain the differences, as long as you keep them small and/or short lived.

Yes, this is really what they do. Consider electromagnetic attraction or repulsion, for example. We are taught very early on that like charges repel and unlike charges attract, but not why, until you get to University and study QM. At this point you are told that the reason charges can both repel, and attract, is due to a magical particle called the virtual photon. Not a real photon, but a virtual one, that comes into existence when the charged particles get close enough for just long enough to push them apart – or, magically, pull them together [13]. Why not use a real particle? Because for this to work the particle in question has to travel faster than the speed of light, which is just not allowed, according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity [14] – even QM proponents are not (yet) ready to declare that Einstein was wrong about this.

So, rather than use a real particle, they merely invent a magical virtual particle to do exactly the same thing, and that apparently is perfectly fine. You can even have your real photon turn into a virtual electron and virtual positron for a short period of time, then back again. Yes, the sort of fudge that in school would get you a failing mark and a suggestion that you try your idea in a creative writing class instead is trumpeted by the proponents of QM to such a degree that you can even win a Nobel Prize for it, as Willis Lamb did for the “Lamb shift” [15, 16, 17, 18], which unlike what the name suggests is not a dance (although there is a lot of Hokey Pokey going on).

The above describes just the problems with QM that I determined after a brief examination of the field in University. Miles Mathis has shredded QM with even more enthusiasm. I have described his sub-atomic/atomic/molecular model in detail already, and that section should probably be read first before delving into the references listed for the key issues he has addressed below:

Problems with the Copenhagen Interpretation [19, 20, 21]
Superposition and wave-particle “duality”, including a mechanical explanation of superposition that according to QM proponents can not exist, hence the need for QM in the first place [21, 22]
A mechanical explanation of “quantum entanglement” that does not require any magical particles [23]
What “quantum teleportation” really is, once again doing away with magical particles [24]
Why “quantum nonlocality” does not exist [25]
What “quantum tunnelling” really is, once again without magical particles [26, 27]
Problems in the mathematical bedrock on which all of QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) is based. QED is meant to show how quantum mechanics and special relativity actually agree about the universe. It turns out Bohr made a number of mistakes that result in severe problems for QED [28, 29, 30, 31]
Why the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is not the carte blanche excuse for allowing magical particles and forces in QM [19, 33]
On Feynman and his use of “mathematics” in relation to QM [34, 35]
Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a theory that postulates protons, neutrons and other particles are themselves made up of smaller particles (quarks) that are held together by other particles (gluons) travelling between them, and similarly this “strong force” is what holds together protons and neutrons in an atomic nucleus [36]. QCD is basically the part of QM that deals with atoms and subatomic particles, explaining the “particle zoo” of “elementary” particles [37]. It’s also full of dodgy assumptions and mathematics [38, 39, 40, 41] and is not even needed to come up with a working model of subatomic particles [42, 43]. The Structured Atom Model (SAM) also shows how to build atoms without the need for quarks or a strong force [44] and is not too far removed from Miles’s model
Some issues with Coulomb’s equation and experiment, and how a proper consideration of it breaks both QED and QCD [45]
An experiment with tungsten ditelluride led to some unexpected results, as reported at Nature [46]. Miles explains how this contradicts QM [47], as well as the sort of language that is used to stop the educated layperson from working out what is really happening

We’re not the only ones to have found significant problems in QM – consider “Something is rotten in the state of QED” [48] and the very good summary of the same paper [49].

Participants at the 1947 Shelter Island Conference on Quantum Mechanics, considered key in establishing the foundations of QM. From the National Academy of Sciences archives [50]

So, to summarise – starting nearly a century ago a number of very bright men decided to believe JBS Haldane’s statement “my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose” [54]. They were unable to come up with a real physical theory of the Universe, and thus declared that it would be impossible for anyone else to do so, resulting in a group of theories that are based on invalid assumptions and held together by mathematical fudges and magical particles. This is ironic bearing in mind that as Scientists we are taught to maintain a sceptical outlook [51] when evaluating the claims and explanations of a theory.

I would submit that if a lot more scientists had cast a sceptical eye over QM sooner rather than assuming it was all settled Science our understanding of Nature would be much further advanced, and millions of person-hours and billions of dollars would not have been lost in one of the largest wild goose chases of all time.

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