> Hakki Alacakaptan wrote:
>
> > Now some speculation: Did Einstein object to indeterminacy because he was
> > just being stubborn or because he knew Heisenberg was a Nazi? After all,
> > Einstein did give up the universal constant when a Vatican physicist sold
> > him on the big bang, so he couldn't have been that pigheaded.
>
> Einstein's objections to quantum mechanics may have been largely
> aesthetic and philosophical, but they were well founded by the standards
> of the era. Quantum theory is a little like the Bush budget: when the
> implications are fully laid out for people, they often don't believe the
> person explaining it to them is telling the truth.
Well they might not be, if "implications" are interpretations, which can get pretty wild. But I've found most intelligent people able to grasp the basic concepts of QM, if it is explained properly.
> The last 70 years of
> high energy physics has revolved around finding ways to dodge the stuff
> no one really believes.
Nonsense.
> The great thing about science is that you don't have to believe anything
> to build stuff like nuclear weapons.
>
> I doubt whatever personal opinion Einstein had of Heisenberg was a
> factor in his scientific judgement. Bohr himself played a far larger
> part in the "Copenhagen interpretation" which was the more important
> target of Einstein's Gedankenexperimenten than the uncertainty principle
> itself, which could have been (and still could turn out to be) a
> measurement problem rather than a physical reality.
Einstein's biggest problem was with the notion that reality was non-local, that there could be invisible, instantaneous, action at a distance. This argument against QM was published in 1935 with Podolsky and Rosen and became known as the EPR paradox. Einstein postulated the existence of hidden variables, a "measurement problem". However the experimental proof of Bell's Theorem in 1982 pretty much put that issue to rest. There are no hidden variables, Einstein was wrong, and the universe is non-local.
Ironically Einstein's doubt about QM was crucial to its progress. Bell's Theorem is very important to QM and Bell began work on it because he was out to prove Einstein correct. Also Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect was a foundation to QM so even though he may not have liked it, he was an important physicist in QM theory.
[...]
Matt
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