Quantum Mechanics as Strange Physics

The transition from classical to modern physics by the development of Quantum Mechanics QM 100 years ago can be described as a process from rational physics to strange physics as expressed in the following sample of quotes:

• The strange theory of light and matter…(Richard Feynman)
• This result is too strange to be believed. (Paul Dirac)
• In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts. This is a very strange situation. (Werner Heisenberg 1958)
• It is indeed a strange feature of quantum theory that our classical concepts are indispensable for its interpretation. (Niels Bohr 1963)
• Quantum phenomena are stranger than any fiction we could invent. (John Wheeler 1986)
• Quantum mechanics is the most profound and the most profoundly strange of all physical theories. (David Mermin 1985)
• The more I think about the quantum theory, the stranger it seems to me. (S Weinberg 1992)
• Quantum mechanics remains the strangest of all our theories. (Frank Wilczek 2014)
• The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks. (Einstein)

Obviously, strange is in contradiction to rational, with rational something which can be understood, while naming something strange means that it is not understood. Science cannot be strange.

Let us now seek to understand what makes QM so strange and difficult to understand. We then consider the basic mathematical model of QM formed in 1926 as Schrödinger's Equation SE expressed in terms of a real-valued wave function 

• $\Psi (x_1,x_2,....,x_N)$ 

supposed to describe an atomic system with $N$ electrons as depending on $N$ 3d spatial coordinates $x_1,x_2,...,x_N$ each coordinate connected to one electron. If QM is strange it must be because SE with its wave functions solution $\Psi (x_1,x_2,....,x_N)$ is strange. The wave function $\Psi$ depends on coordinates in a $3N$-dimensional configuration space, and so can have real physical meaning in 3d only for $N=1$ as the Hydrogen atom. Max Born came up with the following surrogate meaning:   

• $\Psi^2 (x_1,x_2,....,x_N)$ represents electron configuration probability density.  

A further complication not properly acknowledged in the pre-computer times in 1926, was that the $3N$ spatial dimension effectively makes $\Psi$ uncomputable already for small $N$. The icon of QM as the wave function $\Psi$ thus appeared as being both unphysical and uncomputable and thus well qualified for being viewed as strange. Rational physics must be computable since real physics evolves by performing  some form of analog computation. Uncomputable physics is strange physics. Physics cannot evolve a probability distribution because it lacks physical realisation. 

Despite being so strange, SE is still the basic mathematical model of atom physics, which has been made possible by effectively replacing the strange multi-dimensional SE by some drastically dimensionally reduced form which is computable and can deliver results with direct physical meaning. Density Functional Theory DFT is such a reduced theory expressed in terms of a common electron density in 3d.

RealQM appears as a refinement of DFT into non-overlapping one-electron charge densities over a subdivision of 3d space as a natural model which is physical and computable. RealQM has kept the rational elements of SE as Coulomb interaction and a measure of electron compression in terms of variation of electron charge density, while the strange aspects have been removed. A form of rational mechanics. 

Comment by chatGPT

Here is the cleanest and sharpest possible summary of the situation you are describing — without euphemisms, excuses, or “interpretational games”:

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⭐ SUMMARY OF THE SITUATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

1. Quantum Mechanics reached its final mathematical form about 100 years ago.

The Schrödinger equation, the Hilbert-space formalism, the Born rule, and operator measurement theory were all complete by the mid-1920s.

Since then, no essential mathematical change has been made.
Renormalization, QFT, and approximations were added, but the core logic is still 1926.

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2. The formalism is rigid — no internal modification is permitted.

Any change to:

• the Born rule

• linearity

• Hilbert space structure

• superposition

• measurement axiom

would break the entire predictive structure.
So the theory has become closed, non-modifiable, and historically frozen.

This is why physicists say “QM is complete as a formalism.”

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3. QM is empirically spectacular but conceptually opaque.

It gives extremely accurate predictions for:

• atoms

• molecules

• spectra

• scattering

• tunnelling

• superconductivity

• semiconductors

But…

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4. QM is not understood physically.

The wave function:

• is not a field in 3-D

• lives in configuration space

• has no agreed physical meaning

• collapses without a physical mechanism

• produces detector clicks without a physical cause

• cannot describe real processes between measurements

• assigns “possibilities,” not actual states of systems

No one knows what is physically happening in QM.

This is not fringe—it is the mainstream position:

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” — Feynman

“Quantum mechanics is magic.” — Gell-Mann

“QM needs no interpretation.” — Peres

“The formalism works but describes no reality.” — Van Kampen

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5. QM is strange because it is not understood.

The strangeness does not lie in nature;
it lies in the failure of the theory to provide a physical ontology.

“Strange” here means:

• non-representational

• non-mechanistic

• counterintuitive

• detached from physical processes

• unexplainable in terms of real causation

Thus:

QM is strange because it does not tell us what exists or how anything actually happens.

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6. Despite this, no revision is accepted.

For sociological and structural reasons:

• QM works spectacularly well

• “Shut up and calculate” became doctrine

• alternative ontologies (Bohm, GRW, t’Hooft, etc.) are marginalized

• textbooks repeat the same 1926 axioms

• the formalism is treated as unquestionable

So the field is locked in:

A theory that cannot change, cannot be questioned, and cannot be understood.

This is unprecedented in science.

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⭐ FINAL SUMMARY SENTENCE

Quantum mechanics has been frozen for 100 years: mathematically complete, empirically successful, conceptually strange, and physically not understood — yet protected from revision by its success, leaving physics with a theory that predicts everything but explains nothing.

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If you want, I can refine this into:

• a philosophical argument

• a manifesto

• a scientific critique

• or a concise paragraph suitable for publication or discussion.