[spiritbear14]

I think the ether can be seen as a very primitive form of quantum field theory. It's like Newton attempting to do alchemy by turning lead into gold. We later find out that it is possible but not the way he was doing it and tremendously difficult.

But we don't know if ether or QFT or any of these theories is actually what's going on.

[oneshtein]

Ether is a physical thing, while quantum field is a mathematical model of the physical thing. Don't mix physics and mathematics, please.

[simiones]

Nothing in quantum theory is understood at a level where we can say "this is a physical thing" vs "this is a mathematical abstraction of the physical thing", like we can say for classical physics. In classical physics, it's easy to say "masses and speeds and positions and forces are physical things, while energy or the Langrangian or the Hamiltonian are mathematical tools".

But in quantum physics, we have things like the Schrodinger equation (or the QFTs) where it's not clear. They don't appear to be physical, but we also have the Bell inequalities that suggest there can't be an objective physical layer beneath them either, so we are left with a conundrum.

I think a lot of people do believe that quantum fields are real physical things, and actually "more real" than the classical intuitions we have. In this view, the electron field or the electric field are what actually exists, and balls or water or ether are the abstractions.

[oneshtein]

Yes, this is the problem I'm talking about. We are not understanding physics at quantum level, so we are using mathematical model to describe reality, but it creates problem when we are starting to understand the physics.

Hydrodynamic quantum analogs are macroscopic objects with quantum behavior, which we can study. We can clearly see, with our own eyes, medium, particle, it pilot wave, and their interaction. For example, double slit experiment is not a mystery anymore: it just self-interference of pilot wave.

[simiones]

I know about the hydrodynamic analogues, and I've seen the double-slit experiment with the bouncing droplet. However, it is unfortunately not a very good model, as it requires changes in the wave to propagate at infinite speed in order to explain other experiments (the ones that fail Bell's inequalities). And that in turn causes many other problems as well. Not to mention, the pilot wave interpretation actually needs lots of work that no one has done yet to actually concur with QFT and the extraordinarily precise experiments that have confirmed the results there. So, it's a particularly problematic interpretation of quantum mechanics, despite having the neat hydrodynamic model.

[oneshtein]

Hydrodynamic model is not an interpretation or a theory - it's a model. Models are not perfect, but they are physical, they are real things in the real world, no need to prove anything, because they are the proof.

HQM exists, it demonstrates quantum behavior, it has the pilot wave. If QFT doesn't fit the real world, then it is bad for theory, not for the real world.

[simiones]

The hydrodynamic analogue of quantum mechanics has some behaviors of QM, but not all. It's a nice analogy, and it is a real physical system of course, but it is not how elementary particles behave.

If you construct a hydrodynamic experiment where two droplets are bounced on the same wave in different directions (analogous to two entangled particles moving in different directions), and then performed simultaneous measurements on them far away from each other, you would not see the same correlations between the measurements on the separate droplets that you see when doing this experiment with entangled particles.

However, if you perform your measurement on one side, and after enough time on the other, you would see the expected correlation: the measurement on droplet A modifies the pilot wave, and that modification is carried over to affect the behavior of droplet B after some time. In experiments on elementary particles though, this time is 0, or at least much less than distance/c, which is why we say that QM pilot wave theory is non-local.