Does a controversy still exist ?

  • Thread starter McQueen
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In summary: Aren't you taking a bit your dreams for reality here ? I know that your programme is to show ONE DAY that SOME classical field theory might EVENTUALLY reproduce observed quantum effects, but for sure it will not be good old Maxwell with no additional stuff, right ? Try to explain anti-correlations such as the famous paper by Thorn et al...
  • #106
now we have a contradiction, Ro69 says nay, jtbell says yay. I tend to trust jtbell's answer more as he is a science advisor and he agrees with me, and he put some details in too.
 
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  • #107
alfredblase said:
now we have a contradiction, Ro69 says nay, jtbell says yay. I tend to trust jtbell's answer more as he is a science advisor and he agrees with me, and he put some details in too.
But then we would have to go into what [itex]P(x,y,z,t) = \psi^\star \psi[/itex] stands for , which leads to the disassociation of light and so on. Even on the question of the transition of light there are many explanations , with the classical wave explanation and the QED explanation.
 
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  • #108
Like Hurkyl first said all those posts ago, according to QM, light is neither a classical particle nor a classical wave.

Light (according to QM) is a quantum mechanical dimensionless particle with a probability density function for all its properties.

And QM is the most widely accepted theory and with good reason.
 
  • #109
As Julian Schwinger noted in his excellent text on Quantum Mechanics, the classical world can be divided into two camps, the discrete and the continuous. A tension exists between these two extremes within classical physics and this tension led the early founders of quantum theory to talk at great length about the mysterious wave particle duality. As we grew in understanding it became clear that this silly classical duality is simply our attempt to force a classical interpretation on what is really a quantum unity. The photon is a quanta, neither classical wave nor classical particle. This is why practicing physicists don't talk or worry about some sort of silly wave particle duality. In my opinion, people who insist on talking about the wave particle duality are people who refuse to give up their classical notions (and of course those who are honestly learning). For these people, everything must be a classical wave or a classical particle, but nature has said otherwise.
 

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