Adventures in Quantumland

Exploring Our Unseen Reality

Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Science, Physics, Quantum Theory, Astrophysics & Space Science

• Author: Ruth E Kastner
• ISBN: 9781786346438
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Publication: April 17, 2019
• Imprint: WSPC (EUROPE)
• Language: English

This title is a self-contained follow-up to Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (2015). Intended for the general reader but including more advanced material and an appendix of technical references for physics students and researchers, it reviews the basics of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics in its newer incarnation as a fully relativistic, realist interpretation of quantum theory, while embarking on further explorations of the implications of quantum theory. This interpretation is applied to new experiments and alleged 'paradoxes' that are found to be fully explicable once various misconceptions are identified.

There is currently much disagreement about the meaning of quantum theory, as well as confusion about the implications of various experiments such as 'weak measurements,' 'quantum eraser,' and delayed choice. This book provides a clear way forward, presenting new developments and elaborating a promising interpretational approach that has completely nullified earlier objections (such as the Maudlin objection). It also explains why some prominent competing interpretations, such as 'decoherence' in an Everettian ('Many Worlds') approach, do not work as advertised.

Adventures in Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality offers a fully relativistic interpretation of quantum mechanics with no discontinuity between non-relativistic and relativistic domains and shows how quantum theory allows for free will and for reconciliation of science and spiritual traditions.

Contents:

• Prologue

• About the Author

• Part I: Our Transactional Reality:

  • The Iceberg Revisited
  • The Transactional Interpretation
  • Observation and Measurement
  • The Spacetime Theater
  • Becoming and the Arrow of Time
  • Life and Free Will
  • Science and Spirit
  • Epilogue
  • Appendix: Behind the Magician's Curtain

• Part II: Selected Papers:

  • Quantifying Absorption in the Transactional Interpretation
  • On the Status of the Measurement Problem: Recalling the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation
  • Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously
  • The Emergence of Space–Time: Transactions and Causal Sets
  • On Quantum Collapse as a Basis for the Second Law of Thermodynamics
  • Beyond Complementarity
  • Bound States as Fundamental Quantum Structures
  • Antimatter in the Direct-Action Theory of Fields
  • Haag's Theorem as a Reason to Reconsider Direct-Action Theories
  • 'Einselection' of Pointer Observables: The New H-Theorem?
  • The Born Rule and Free Will: Why Libertarian Agent-Causal Free Will is not 'Antiscientific'

• Index

Readership: Intended for the general reader but includes more advanced material and an appendix of technical references for physics students and researchers.
Key Features:

• Offers a fully relativistic interpretation of quantum mechanics with no discontinuity between non-relativistic and relativistic domains
• Solves longstanding interpretational issues in a realist manner
• Shows how quantum theory is compatible with free will
• Debunks misleading and untenable claims about new experiments