In the last post, I showed you how a projectile in a superposition of moving to the left or of moving to the right can only be measured to be doing one or the other. But what happens to the wave function of the system when the measurement is made? Does it… does it… COLLAPSE!?
Sounds scary. But it is only scary when it is badly explained.
Today I’ll show you what wave function collapse would mean, what it would require, and what a couple of the alternatives are. Among other things, I’ll show you that:
- The standard way of explaining wave function collapse, which argues collapse is required to avoid a logical problem, is not legitimate;
- If the Schrödinger wave equation is correct, then wave function collapse can never happen (and anything resembling “collapse” is viewed not as a physical effect but as a user’s choice);
- Therefore, if wave function collapse really does occur, then the Schrödinger equation is wrong;
- But if the Schrödinger wave equation is correct, an understanding of why quantum theory predicts only probabilities for multiple possibilities, rather than definite outcomes, is still lacking.
Today’s post uses several previous posts and their figures as a foundation, so I’ll start with a review of the most recent one, with links to others of relevance.
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