Quantum mechanics and relativity theory are the crown jewels of physics because they have quite simply never been wrong. Modern physics began with Maxwell’s wave equations in the 1860s, then Planck’s constant in 1900, Einstein’s special relativity in 1905, general relativity in 1915, and Schrödinger’s wave equation in 1925. Despite initial skepticism, these theories met every logical and experimental test their critics could devise. They amazed even their advocates, as Fermi predicted the neutrino in 1933 before it was found in 1953, and Dirac predicted anti-matter before it too was found. Yet over a century later, quantum theory still doesn’t make any sense. As Ford says:
“Its just that the theory lacks a rationale. ‘How come the quantum’ John Wheeler likes to ask. ‘If your head doesn’t swim when you think about the quantum,’ Niels Bohr reportedly said, ‘you haven’t understood it.’ And Richard Feynman … who understood quantum mechanics as deeply as anyone, wrote: ‘My physics students don’t understand it either. That is because I don’t understand it.’”(Ford, 2004) p98
For the first time in history, the scholars of a discipline don’t actually believe what their reigning theories say! They accept the calculations are correct but deny that they represent reality. This is, to say the least, an unusual state of affairs. The problem isn’t inexperience, as these theories are used in a host of technologies that define life today, from cell phones to space exploration, yet:
“… physicists who work with the theory every day don’t really know quite what to make of it. They fill blackboards with quantum calculations and acknowledge that it is probably the most powerful, accurate, and predictive scientific theory ever developed. But … the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension, and even anger.” (Vacca, 2005) p116
The equations, tests and applications work but the theory makes no physical sense, e.g. in Feynman’s sum over histories an electron travels all possible paths between two points at once – but how can one electron do that? Theories usually increase understanding but in physics they seem to take it away. For example, wave-particle duality lets waves become particles, but this denies what waves and particles are. Given a choice between meaning and mathematics, physics long ago chose the latter. As a result, quantum theory still isn’t taught in high schools, because who can teach what makes no sense? Modern physics is a mathematical feast with no semantic substance, a hollow science built on impressive equations about quantum states that everyone agrees don’t exist! And this way of no meaning was deliberate:
“… we have locked up quantum physics in “black boxes”, which we can handle and operate without knowing what is going on inside. (Audretsch, 2004) (Preface, p x).
The result has been described as fairy tale physics (Baggot, 2013), where imaginary particles from invisible fields within empty space make equations work for no good reason. But when fundamental physics stopped trying to understand its findings, it stagnated:
“How unusual it is for three decades to pass without major progress in fundamental physics? Even if we look back more than two hundred years…it is unprecedented.” (Smolin, 2006) p viii
The cause isn’t a few anomalies in an otherwise perfect vision. Quantum theory rules the micro-cosmic world of atoms and relativity rules the cosmic world of stars, so for these core theories to make no sense at all is big problem. Even worse, relativity and quantum mechanics contradict each other! Each works in its domain, relativity for cosmic events, and quantum theory for atomic events, but together they clash:
“The problem … is that when the equations of general relativity commingle with those of quantum mechanics, the result is disastrous.” (Greene, 2004, p15)
This conflict tells us that something is wrong. Particle physics today is stagnating because the “shut up and calculate” doctrine of Copenhagen led into a theory desert, where false mirages abound. The denial of meaning resulted in myths based on imagination not reality:
“… the main reason for the existence of myths in QM {quantum mechanics} is the fact that QM does not give a clear answer to the question of what, if anything, objective reality is.” (Nikoli, 2008) p43
It is time to return to the original hard question of physics, which is “What is reality?“