Ephemeral Properties and the Illusion of Microscopic Particles

Abstract

Founding our analysis on the Geneva-Brussels approach to quantum mechanics, we use conventional macroscopic objects as guiding examples to clarify the content of two important results of the beginning of twentieth century: Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen's reality criterion and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. We then use them in combination to show that our widespread belief in the existence of microscopic particles is only the result of a cognitive illusion, as microscopic particles are not particles, but are instead the ephemeral spatial and local manifestations of non-spatial and non-local entities.

Using simple elastic bands to explain quantum mechanics: a conceptual review of two of Aerts’ machine-models

“…This wholeness aspect was already pointed out by Schroedinger [30], when he emphasized that entangled states like (16) are associated to a notion of nonseparability, in the sense that two quantum entities can find each other in a state such that only the properties of the pair appear to be defined, whereas the individual properties of each one of the two entities that have formed the pair remain totally undefined 4 . 4 In fact, and quite surprisingly, it is not the notion of nonseparability that creates difficulty in quantum mechanics, but rather the notion of separability.…”

“…4 In fact, and quite surprisingly, it is not the notion of nonseparability that creates difficulty in quantum mechanics, but rather the notion of separability. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the experimental violation of Bell's inequality didn't provide a solution of the EPR paradox per se.…”

“…But other entities -like quantum entities for example -'take place' outside space, or -and this would be another way of saying the same thing -within a space that is not the three dimensional Euclidean space." Clearly, we cannot enter here in the analysis of these important ideas (for more details, see for instance [6,10,13,[33][34][35] and the references cited therein), as this would bring us too far away from the primary motivation of this paper, which was only to conceptually review two of Aerts' historical machine-models, in order to promote a deeper understanding of the physical content "hidden" within the abstract quantum formalism. It is worth emphasizing that the truly interesting aspect about these models is not their ability to realistically describe physical entities as such, but to capture, by means of powerful analogies, the possible logic at the basis of their functioning, when they interact with the different experimental contexts.…”

“…The same of course can be said about the constituents of the atomic structures, the so-called elementary particles, which in fact do not behave as particles, and can certainly not be understood (i.e., visualized) as little tiny corpuscles moving around in the three-dimensional Euclidean space [4,5]. So, how should we understand the reality of the microscopic quantum entities?…”

Quantum fields are not fields; comment on “There are no particles, there are only fields,” by Art Hobson [Am. J. Phys. 81(3), 211–223 (2013)]

“…Consequently, one cannot predict with certainty its future locations. Now, according to the reality criterion formulated by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [2], and further refined by Piron and Aerts [3][4][5], the notion of actual existence is intimately related to the notion of predictability, in the sense that a property can be said to be actual, for a given physical entity, if and only if should one decide to observe it (i.e., to test it), the success of the observation would be in principle predictable in advance, with certainty.According to this general reality (or existence) criterion, one must conclude that a microscopic entity obeying the HUP cannot actually possess the property of being always present somewhere in space, as there are no means to predict its spatial localizations with certainty, not even in principle. Therefore, whatever its nature is, it is a non-spatial entity, and if only for this reason it * Electronic address: autoricerca@gmail.com cannot be considered a particle [5].…”