Corruption of Modern Physics 4: Nobel Prize to Spooky Action at Distance

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for

• Experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.

In other words, the Prize was awarded for showing that Einstein was wrong when questioning the idea of entangled photons with spooky action at distance, as if two photons/particles could be in instant contact/communication even if widely separated in space (thus seemingly violating Einstein's basic relativity postulate of the speed of light as maximal speed of propagation of physical effects).  

Einstein never accepted the canon of the Copenhagen Interpretation CI of the new quantum mechanics dictated by Bohr and Born in the 1920s and still dominating, and so was expelled from the physics community along with Schrödinger as the inventor of the Schrödinger equation for the Hydrogen atom. 

Einstein could not accept spooky action at distance nor the statistical interpretation in CI expressed with his famous God does not play dice. Schrödinger could not give up local reality or Anschaulichkeit as a reality existing in three space dimensions even if not observed by a human being or instrument. 

The controversy between Bohr/Born and Einstein/Schrödinger, that has never be reconciled, has had catastrofical consequences for the development of modern physics through the 20th century into our days.  The 2022 Prize is an expression of the resulting collapse of reality behind string theory, extra dimensions, multiversa, dark matter/energy and black holes occupying the minds of physicists today with lofty promises of quantum computers from superposition and entanglement always far from realisation. 

Quantum mechanics started in 1925 with Schrödinger's equation for the Hydrogen atom as a real physics continuum wave equation for a negatively charged one electron cloud under Coulomb attraction from a positively charged pointwise kernel/proton, expressed in a wave function $\Psi (x,t)$ depending on a three dimensional space variable $x$ and a time variable $t$, with the square of the wave function expressing charge density. This model showed precise agreement with the spectrum of Hydrogen as a formidable stunning success of theoretical physics and Schrödinger instantly rocketed to fame.

But the trouble started already with the Helium atom with two electrons. A quick solution directly presented itself as a direct mathematical generalisation to an atom with $N>1$ electrons simply by formulating a linear multi-dimensional wave equation in a wave function $\Psi (x1,x2,..xN,t)$ depending on $N$ three-dimensional space variables $x1,x2,...,xN,$ as if each electron occupies its own three-dimensional space. A mathematician could make such a generalisation with a stroke of a pen, just like extending the real line into a space of any dimension in linear algebra. With such a wave function electrons are entangled unless the multi-dimensional wave function is a product of one-dimensional wave functions, which is too simple to work. Electron entanglement is thus directly ingrained ad hoc by definition through a truly multi-dimensional wave function, as well as superposition by linearity.  

The direct question confronting Schrödinger was if such an ad hoc formal mathematical generalisation could have any physical meaning? Schrödinger concluded that a wave depending on $3N$ space variables cannot be Anschaulich or represent any reality, and he could not accept Born's resort to a statistical interpretation, and so Schrödinger left quantum mechanics already at its start, or rather like Einstein was kicked out. It is the statistical interpretation of the wave function forced upon science from a multi-dimensional wave function, which is the root of all the unresolved troubles. 

There we stand today: The holy grail of quantum mechanics is a linear multi-dimensional wave equation/function without local reality but with entanglement and spooky action at distance ingrained by construction, claimed to always be in exact agreement with observation, although uncomputable by multi-dimensionality. This is not something, whether you are physicist or not, which you can question, and it is then ironic that the 2022 Prize is given to experimental work initiated in the 1970s supposedly showing that Einstein was wrong, that is showing something which was a truth already 90 years ago. It is as if Einstein's ghost is still haunting physics, by asking questions which again and again have to be dismissed as being silly, without ever being answered satisfactorily.

The state of quantum mechanics today as witnessed by all prominent physicists is that quantum mechanics is weird, with weirdness increasing with prominence. As an example let us just listen to what 2022 Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger, named the Quantum Pope, has to say in the concluding words of his book Dance of the Photons with title What Does It All Mean?: 

• We have learned that the idea that the world exists in all its properties independent of us, independent of the kinds of observations we perform, is in trouble.
• It now becomes clear why Einstein had to criticize quantum mechanics, why he called entanglement “spooky.” His picture of the real, factual reality that exists in its essential properties independent of us, this picture of a separation of reality and information, does not seem to be tenable in quantum physics.
• We also learned that a specific philosophical view has been definitely ruled out by the experiment. This is the concept of local realism. Local realism is the point of view that whatever we observe is defined in some way by a real physical property of the observed systems, a property that exists before and independently of our observation. 
• We also learned that the quantum world is governed by a qualitatively new kind of randomness. The individual measurement result is purely random, without any possibility of detailed causal explanation. It is not just that we do not know what the cause is. This is probably the most fascinating consequence in quantum physics. Just imagine: centuries of scientific research, centuries of the search for causes, and attempts to explain why things happen just the way they happen lead us to a final wall. 

What Zeilinger says is that the idea of factual reality is in trouble and does not seem tenable and attempts to explain why things happen the way they happen has led to a final wall, all based on a very tricky photon experiment saying very little about the real world. For this he is awarded the Nobel Prize. The hype is huge: Quantum Manifesto and The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It

To be more precise, the Prize is awarded to experimental work showing that model predictions by solving a multi-dimensional linear Schrödinger equation, although uncomputable, exactly agree with certain very specific very tricky experiments with photons without physical reality, from which it is concluded that any search for a model describing physical reality in the spirit of Einstein is fruitless. In other words, modern physics is settled and the Nobel Prize in Physics has no more role to play.       

If you do not think that science is ever settled, you may be interested in a realist approach to the atomic world: Real Quantum Mechanics.