Einstein vs. Bohr

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Cypress

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Einstein, Bohr and the war over quantum theory

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics

All hell broke loose in physics some 90 years ago. Quantum theory emerged — partly in heated clashes between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. It posed a challenge to the very nature of science, and arguably continues to do so, by severely straining the relationship between theory and the nature of reality.

At the 1927 Solvay Conference in Brussels, 29 brilliant scientists gathered to discuss the fledgling quantum theory. Here, the disagreements between Bohr, Einstein and others, including Erwin Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie, came to a head.

Whereas Bohr proposed that entities (such as electrons) had only probabilities if they weren’t observed, Einstein argued that they had independent reality, prompting his famous claim that “God does not play dice with the universe”.

Suddenly, scientific realism — the idea that confirmed scientific theories roughly reflect reality — was at stake.

For Albert Einstein, reality exists regardless of the existence of the knowing subject, and from the perspective of Niels Bohr, we do not have access to the ultimate reality of the matter, unless conditioning it to the existence of an observer endowed with rationality.

Continued
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41...roposed that entities,God does not play dice”.
 
The electron orbits are a "cloud".

When you observe them, you know either the momentum or location, not both.
 
AProudLefty said:
The electron orbits are a "cloud".

When you observe them, you know either the momentum or location, not both.
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For sure. It drove Einstein nuts.
The overarching question concerns whether the quantum waveform representatives objective reality or is it just the subjective knowledge of an observer?
 
The conventional wisdom from the late 1920s is that Bohr had beaten Einstein, and Bohr's instrumentalist version of the quantum universe prevailed over Einstein's realist approach to quantum mechanics. I even remember Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation being taught as the consensus theory in freshman physics in the 1980s.

My impression is that time has been kinder to Einstein and the Copenhagen interpretation is on the wane among researchers with expertise in quantum mechanics -- giving rise to realist interpretations of quantum reality, aka the many worlds interpretation.
 
Two models are correct. The Newtonian model and QM.

As I have stated, the Godel's Incompleteness Theorem states that it cannot be solved in this universe.
 
BidenPresident said:
Explain. I thought you said quantum mechanics does not refute Newton?
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Both models are correct.

At subatomic level, the Newtonian laws break down. They don't work at that level.

QM doesn't apply at large scales, unless you want to talk about the probability of someone being able to go through a wall.
 
AProudLefty said:
Two models are correct. The Newtonian model and QM.

As I have stated, the Godel's Incompleteness Theorem states that it cannot be solved in this universe.
Click to expand...

Right.
I need to research Godel more.

Einstein accepted QM. In a sense, he was one of the founders of QM, going back to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect.

What Einstein hated was Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of QM. Einstein was a scientific realist who could not abide by the Bohr's instrumentalist approach to the quantum wave function collapse. Einstein at heart believed in a deterministic universe, and he just thought Bohr's probabilistic interpretation of QM must be missing some fundamental variables or insights needed to make the theory compete.
 
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